PRINCETON,  N.  J 


BX  5055   .H673  1881  ' 
Hore,  A.  H. 

Eighteen  centuries  of  the 
Church  in  England 


EIGHTEEN  CENTURIES 


OF 


THE  churchI%/'1,15iV 


IN 


ENGLAND. 


BY  THE 


REV.  A.  H.  HORE,  M.A. 

TRINITY  COLLEGE,  OXFORD. 


PARKER  AND  CO. 
OXFORD,  AND  6  SOUTHAMPTON-STREET, 
STRAND,  LONDON. 

1881. 


PREFACE. 


'J^HE  object  of  the  present  work  is  to  lay  before 
English  Churchmen,  I  will  not  say  the  history, 
but  an  unbroken  narrative  of  their  Church  from  its 
commencement  to  the  present  day.  An  idea  prevails 
with  some,  and  those  influential  people,  who  use  their 
influence  to  the  detriment  of  the  Church,  that  the 
Church  in  England  was  founded  by  the  State  at  the 
Reformation ;  that  the  State  therefore  has  the  right 
to  deal  with  it  as  it  pleases,  to  secularize  its  institu- 
tions, or  to  confiscate  its  endowments.  So  far  from 
this  being  true,  history  shews  that  a  Christian  Church 
existed  in  this  country  of  ours  long  before  the  Ger- 
mans converted  Britain  into  England,  and  long  before 
Parliament  was  thought  of ;  the  Reformers  themselves 
tell  us  again  and  again  that  it  was  not  the  intention  of 
the  Reformation  to  innovate,  but  to  restore  ;  to  root  out 
recent  corruptions  that  had  crept  in ;  and  to  restore 
what  existed  in  the  primitive  and  purer  ages  of  the 
Church ;  and  not  "  to  forsake  and  reject  the  Churches 
of  Italy,  France,  Spain,  Germany,  or  any  such  like 
Churches  \"  Instead  of  the  State  making  the  Church, 
it  would  be  far  more  correct  to  say  that  the  Church 
made  the  State,  for  it  was  the  National  Synods  of  the 

°  Canon  xxx. 
A  2 


IV 


PREFACE. 


English  Church  which  first  suggested  the  idea  of  a  Na- 
tional Parliament  ;  the  Canons  passed  in  those  synods 
were  the  origin  of  our  Statute  Law  ^  ;  and  instead  of 
the  State  having  endowed  the  Church,  the  property 
of  the  Church  is  incomparably  the  most  ancient  form 
of  property  which  exists. 

In  traversing  so  long  a  period  as  eighteen  hundred 
years,  I  have  unavoidably  been  brought  much  in  con- 
tact with  the  Church  of  Rome,  the  course  of  which, 
for  more  than  three  hundred  years,  flowed  much  in  the 
same  channel  as  that  of  our  own  Church.  In  order 
to  avoid,  as  much  as  possible,  controversy,  which  is 
at  all  times  objectionable,  and  to  present  an  unbroken 
narrative  of  our  own  Church,  I  have  devoted  one 
chapter  to  a  short  review  of  the  rise  and  marvellous 
progress  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  from  the  time  when, 
from  being  the  head  of  the  Suburbicarian  Provinces  of 
the  imperial  city,  it  claimed  its  right  to  make  and  de- 
pose emperors  and  kings  ;  when  the  Pope  deposed 
King  John  of  England,  and  compelled  him  to  hold  his 
kingdom  as  a  fief  of  Rome  ;  till  the  time  when  the  un- 
willing thraldom  under  which  the  Papacy  held  the 
State,  no  less  than  the  Church,  was  shaken  off  at  the 
Reformation. 

In  carrying  out  the  object  which  I  had  in  view, 
I  have  endeavoured,  without  advocating  the  cause 
of  any  particular  party,  to  take  my  stand  on  the  lines 
of  the  English  Church ;  although  I  have  not  hesitated 
to  do  justice  to  the  memory  of  those  who  in  past  time 

See  Green's  History  of  the  English  People,  vol.  i.  59. 


PREFACE. 


V 


have  fought  the  battle  of  the  Church,  because  it  is  the 
fashion  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  disparage  them  ; 
or  to  defend  any  unpopular  cause,  simply  because 
it  is  unpopular ;  or  to  present  in  their  true  light, 
practices,  even  if  my  own  feelings  may  lead  me  to 
doubt  their  expediency,  when  I  am  describing  not 
what  ought  to  be,  but  what  is,  the  Law  of  the  Church. 

Whatever  may  be  the  value  of  the  present  work, 
my  excuse  for  writing  it  is,  that  it  is  the  first  attempt 
that  has  been  made  to  give  a  continuous  narrative 
from  its  commencement  of  the  Church  in  England ; 
and  my  aim  has  been  to  write  it  in  a  style  which 
may  not  only  be  instructive  to  students  and  candi- 
dates for  Holy  Orders,  but  also  not  unattractive  to 
general  readers,  many  of  whom,  whilst  they  would 
be  ashamed  to  be  ignorant  of  the  secular  history  of 
their  country,  have,  it  is  to  be  feared,  although  they 
may  be  ready  with  an  answer  on  every  subject  which 
divides  us,  bestowed  little  attention  on  what  certainly 
is  not  less  interesting,  and  ought  not  to  be  of  less 
importance,  the  history  of  their  Church. 

5  Marine  Square,  Brighton, 

July,  1 88 1. 


ERRATA. 


Page  70,  line  25,>r  "  Ethelfrid  "  read  "  Ethelred." 

  233,  note  \\,for  "prohibited"        " perfected." 

  362,  line  2,^  for  "  associates  "  read  "  associations." 

  416,   „    6,/or"  is6s"  read"  is66." 

  426,  „    29,/«?r  "  Stillingfleet "  r^a^f  "  Chillingwor 

  535)   !)    2,         "Jamaica "        "  and  Barbados. 

  553,   >,    S,/or"  1801"  read"  iS  11." 


CONTENTS. 


PART  I. 
Zbc  Britisb  Cburcb. 

CHAPTER  I. 

The  Foundation  of  the  British  Church. 

The  religion  of  the  primitive  inhabitants  of  Britain. — Authorities 
as  to  the  early  introduction  of  Christianity  into  the  country. — Tra- 
ditions about  SS.  James,  Simon  Zelotes,  and  Aristobulus,  improbable. 
— St.  Joseph  of  Arimathasa. — St.  Peter. — Important  authorities,  that 
St.  Paul  preached  in  Britain. — Opposed  by  the  most  recent  Com- 
mentators.— But  not  impossible. — The  British  Church  of  Oriental 
foundation. — Primitive  Liturgies  .  .  .    pp.  i — 19 

CHAPTER  n. 
The  British  Church  to  the  Missions  of  St.  German. 

Identity  of  the  British  Church  with  the  Church  of  the  present 
day.  —  King  Lucius.  —  The  Diocletian  perseciftion.  —  St.  Alban. — 
Constantine  declared  Emperor  in  Britain. — British  Bishops  present 
at  Councils. — Aries. — Nice. — Sardica. — Rimini. — Orthodoxy  of  the 
early  British  Church. — But  it  was  afterwards  tainted  with  Pelagian- 
ism. — Two  visits  of  St.  German  to  Britain. — The  Alleluia  victory. 

pp.  20—36 

CHAPTER  HL 

The  British  Church  in  Wales. 

The  Anglo-Saxon  Conquest. — Christianity  annihilated  in  the  parts 
occupied  by  the  English. — Takes  refuge  in  Wales. — Combination  of 
the  Churches  of  Britain,  Ireland,  and  Scotland. — British  Missions. — 
Ninian. — Patrick.  —  Columba.  —  Columban. — Gall.  —  Willibrord.  — 
Kilian. — The  two  Ewalds. — Boniface. — British  Schools  and  Monas- 
teries.— British  Saints  .  .  .  .  •    PP-  37 — 59 


viii 


CONTENTS. 


PART  II. 
Zhc  Bnolo*Sajon  Cburcb. 

CHAPTER  I. 

The  Conversion  of  England. 

Gregory  the  Great. — Sends  Augustine  and  forty  Monks  into  Eng- 
land.— Cowardice  of  the  Missionaries. — Ethelbert,  King  of  Kent, 
baptized. — Augustine  consecrated  "  Archbishop  of  the  Enghsh." — 
Meetings  between  Augustine  and  the  British  Bishops. — Arrogance 
of  the  former. —  Death  of  Augustine. — Lawrence  consecrated  as 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury.— Conversion  of  the  Heptarchy. — Bishop 
Wilfrid  ......    pp.  60 — 90 

CHAPTER  II. 

From  Archbishop  Theodore  to  the  Lichfield 
Archbishopric. 

Theodore  consecrated  Archbishop  at  Rome. — Promotes  the  build- 
ing and  endowment  by  the  Thanes  of  Churches. — Synod  of  Hert- 
ford.— Wilfrid  appeals  to  the  Pope  against  the  Archbishop  and  the 
King.  —  Is  in  consequence  imprisoned.  —  Council  of  Hatfield.  — 
Death  of  Theodore.  —  Wilfrid's  second  appeal  to  Rome.  —  The 
Papal  decree  in  his  favour  not  accepted  in  England.  —  Benedict 
Biscop. — Laws  of  Ina. — York  becomes  a  Metropolitan  see. — Synod 
of  Cloveshoo. — The  short-lived  Archbishopric  of  Lichfield. — Peter- 
pence  ......    pp.  91  — 109 

CHAPTER  III. 
The  Danish  Invasions. 

Danish  hatred  of  Christianity. — Persecutions. — Synod  of  Calcuith. 
— King  Alfred. — His  zeal  for  learning. — Intercourse  between  Eng- 
land and  the  Churches  of  India ; — And  the  Patriarch  of  Jerusalem. — 
Alfred  a  great  admirer  of  Rome.- Destruction  of  Monasteries  by 
the  Danes. — Revival  of  Monasticism  under  Odo  and  Dunstan. — 
Archbishop  Elfric  — Piety  of  King  Cnut.— The  Normans.  — Battle 
of  Senlac. — The  cause  of  Rome  advanced  in  England. 

pp.  no — 129 


CONTENTS. 


ix 


PART  III. 
XTbe  Hnolo=1Klorman  Cbuvcb. 

CHAPTER  I. 

Lanfranc  and  William  I. 

Low  state  of  morality  in  England  at  the  Norman  Conquest. — 
Severity  of  William  to  the  English  Church. — Archbishop  Stigand 
deposed.  —  Wulfstan.  —  William's  independence  of  the  Pope. — 
Clerical  marriages. — Separation  of  the  Ecclesiastical  and  Civil  Courts. 
—  Lanfranc.  —  Appointed  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  —  Rebuilds 
Canterbury  Cathedral.  —  Lanfranc's  independence.  —  Pope  Gre- 
gory VIL  ;  —  Upholds  the  doctrine  of  Transubstantiation  against 
Berenger. — The  Sarum  Missal  arranged  by  Bishop  Osmund. — Dis- 
putes between  the  Archbishops  of  Canterbury  and  York. 

pp.  130 — 142 

CHAPTER  IL 

Anselm  and  William  II.  and  Henry  I. 

The  see  of  Canterbury  kept  vacant  four  years.  —  Anselm  re- 
luctantly accepts  it.  —  His  disputes  with  William  Rufus. — Two 
Popes  at  Rome. — Pope  Urban  sends  the  Pall  to  William  to  be 
conferred  by  him. — Anselm  invests  himself  with  it. — Anselm  goes 
to  Rome. — Vacillating  conduct  of  the  Pope. — Henry  I.  King. — 
Requires  Anselm  to  be  re-invested  and  to  do  homage. — Anselm 
refuses. — Treacherous  conduct  of  the  new  Pope. — Anselm  deter- 
mines to  excommunicate  the  King.  —  Averted  from  this  by  the 
Countess  of  Blois.  —  Compromise  effected. — Victory  gained  by 
Anselm  to  the  Church. — See  of  Canterbury  kept  vacant  five  years 
after  Anselm's  death.— Quarrels  between  the  two  Archbishops. — 
Corboil,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  —  A  Legatus  a  latere  sent  by 
the  Pope  into  England. — Battle  of  the  "Standard."     pp.  143 — 161 

CHAPTER  HI. 

Thomas  A  Becket  and  Henry  II. 

The  early  life  of  A  Becket.— Promoted  when  in  Deacon's  Orders 
to  the  Archbishopric  of  Canterbury.  —  Altered  life  of  Becket.  — 
Separation  of  the  Civil  from  the  Ecclesiastical  Courts  the  cause  of 
the  troubles  during  his  Primacy. — Henry  II.  demands  that  convicted 


X 


CONTENTS. 


Clerks  should  first  be  degraded,  and  then  handed  over  to  the  civil 
authorities. — Becket  objects  to  this. — Agrees  to  obey  the  customs 
of  the  kingdom. — Constitutions  of  Clarendon.—  Two  Popes  at  Rome. 
— Charges  against  Becket. — He  retires  to  France,  and  lives  in  exile 
six  years. — Spiteful  conduct  of  the  King.— Becket  annuls  the  Con- 
stitutions of  Clarendon  and  threatens  the  King  with  excommunica- 
tion.— Henry's  alarm. — The  Pope  threatens  Henry  with  an  interdict. 
— The  murder  of  Becket. — Penance  of  the  King  in  Canterbury 
Cathedral     .  .  .  .  .  .    pp.  162 — 177 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Stephen  Langton  and  John. 

Unseemly  quarrel  between  the  Archbishops  of  Canterbury  and 
York.  —  Increase  of  the  Pope's  influence  in  England.  —  Disputes 
between  the  Monks  of  Canterbury  and  the  Bishops  as  to  their  rights 
to  elect  the  Archbishop. — Stephen  Langton  consecrated  Archbishop 
by  Pope  Innocent  III. — King  John  defies  the  Pope. — The  Pope 
places  the  kingdom  under  an  interdict.  —  Afterwards  excommuni- 
cates the  King.— And  threatens  to  depose  him. — John  makes  terms 
with  the  Pope,  and  England  becomes  a  fief  of  Rome.— The  Barons 
make  common  cause  against  the  King. — John  signs  Magna  Charta. 
— Stephen  Langton  the  real  author  of  the  Charter — The  first  article 
declares  that  the  "  Church  of  England  shall  be  free." — The  Pope 
annuls  Magna  Charta. — It  is,  however,  renewed  under  Henry  III. — 
Langton  enforces  the  celibacy  of  the  Clergy  .    pp.  178 — 190 


PART  IV. 
Zbc  Hnolo*1Roman  Cburclx 

CHAPTER  I. 

The  Roman  Church  and  Western  Christendom. 

In  what  sense  the  Church  was  founded  upon  St.  Peter. — The  five 
Patriarchates. — The  Patriarchate  of  Rome  confined  to  the  Suburbi- 
carian  Provinces. — Circumstances  that  favoured  the  Roman  Church. 
— The  Council  of  Sardica  laid  the  foundation  of  its  supremacy. — 
The  Popes  take  advantage  of  it.  —  Still  Gregory  the  Great  pro- 
nounces the  assumption  of  the  title  of  Oecumenical  Bishop  to  be 
blasphemous. — Not  long  afterwards  Pope  Boniface  III.  accepted  it. 


CONTENTS. 


xi 


Rome  specially  indebted  to  the  French  nation  for  its  pre-eminence 
and  temporary  power.  ^ — The  Iconoclastic  controversy. — Charles 
Martel. — Pepin. — Charlemagne  ; — Crowned  by  the  Pope  Emperor 
of  the  West. — The  Pseudo-Isidore  Decretals. — The  ninth  and  tenth 
centuries  an  age  of  darkness. — Division  of  the  Eastern  and  Western 
Churches. — Advance  of  the  Papacy  under  Gregory  VII. — Gregory 
and  the  Emperor  Henry  IV. — The  Crusades  greatly  advanced  the 
influence  of  the  Popes. — Alexander  III.  and  the  Emperor  Barba- 
rossa.  —  Rome's  greatest  height  attained  under  Innocent  III. — 
Decline  commences  from  the  Pontificate  of  Boniface  VIII. — The 
Papacy  removed  to  Avignon. — The  great  Schism  of  the  West. — - 
The  three  Councils. — General  demand  for  a  Reformation. 

pp.  191 — 226 

CHAPTER  II. 

The  Thirteenth  and  Fourteenth  Centuries, 
TILL  THE  Age  of  Wicliffe. 

The  Pope,  through  his  Legate,  claims  the  guardianship  of  the 
young  King  Henry  III. — Also  the  right  of  annulling  the  election 
of  Bishops. — Contrives  to  elect  the  Archbishops  ; — But  not  without 
remonstrance  from  the  Bishops. — Papal  exactions  in  England. — But 
frequently  opposed. — Birth  of  Parliament. — Statute  of  Provisors. — 
Statute  of  Praemunire. — The  Philosophy  of  the  Schoolmen. — How 
it  affected  the  Doctrines  of  the  Church. — Condition  of  the  English 
Church  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries. —  Rise  of  the 
Mendicant  Orders. — Colleges  at  the  Universities  due  to  them. — 
The  Friars  favoured  by  the  Popes. — Their  degeneracy. 

pp.  227 — 248 

CHAPTER  III. 

Pre-reformation  Reformers. 

Reformers  before  Wicliffe. — Archbishop  Rich. — Bishop  Grostete. 
— Archbishop  Sewell. — Archbishops  Bradwardine,  Thursby,  Fitz- 
ralph. — Piers  Ploughman's  Vision. — Wicliffe  appointed  second  on 
a  Commission  under  John  of  Gaunt  to  Bruges.— The  Pope  orders 
his  prosecution. — Insurrection  of  Wat  Tyler  and  Jack  Straw. — 
Archbishop  Sudbury  murdered,  and  Courtney  appointed  Archbishop. 
— Wicliffe  retires  to  Lutterworth,  where  he  dies. — His  opinions. — 
His  translation  of  the  Bible. — In  what  sense  Wicliffe  was  the  fore- 
runner, if  not  the  actual  author,  of  the  Reformation. — Wicliffe's  bones 
burnt. — The  Lollards. — The  statute  De  hmretico  combiirendo. — Prose- 
cutions under  it.— Causes  that  led  to  the  Reformation,  pp.249 — 269 


xii 


CONTENTS. 


PART  V. 
TLbc  Cburcb  of  tbe  IReformation  JEra. 

CHAPTER  I. 

The  Breach  with  Rome. 

Not  the  object  of  English  Reformation  to  separate  from  other 
Churches  nor  to  found  a  new  Church.— Reformation  effected  by 
Convocation  as  well  as  Parliament,  and  no  change  touching  the 
Church  made  without  the  sanction  of  the  former. — The  character 
of  Henry,  and  his  marriage  with  Ann  Boleyn,  only  an  incident  of 
the  Reformation.^ — Henry  to  the  end  of  his  life  a  Romanist. — His 
divorce  from  Katharine.  —  Disgrace  of  Wolsey. —  Cranmer  Arch- 
bishop.— Confirms  Henry's  marriage  with  Ann  Boleyn. — The  Clergy 
subjected  to  a  Prcenmnire. — Refuse  to  accept  Henry's  supremacy 
except  under  a  limitation. — The  "  Annates  Act,"  and  the  "  Statute 
for  the  Restraint  of  Appeals." — The  Pope  annuls  the  divorce  and 
threatens  to  excommunicate  Henry. — The  Act  of  "  Submission  of 
the  Clergy." — All  Bulls  and  Briefs  and  appointments  to  Bishoprics 
from  Rome  forbidden. — Convocation,  with  the  exception  of  Bishop 
Fisher,  together  with  the  Universities,  reject  the  Pope's  jurisdiction. 
— The  Act  of  Supremacy. — Goes  far  beyond  what  the  Clergy  had 
agreed  to. — Execution  of  Bishop  Fisher  and  Sir  Thomas  More. — 
Crumwell  made  Vicegerent. — Dissolution  of  the  smaller  Monasteries. 
— A  rebellion  in  the  north  of  England  in  consequence. — Dissolution 
of  the  larger  Monasteries. — Unprincipled  character  of  the  Commis- 
sioners. —  Execution  of  the  Abbots  of  Reading,  Colchester,  and 
Glastonbury.  —  Confiscation  of  Chantries,  &c.  —  Evils  arising  from 
the  suppression  of  the  Monasteries. — The  seeds  of  Puritanism  sown. 
■ — Several  useful  measures  effected  in  reign  of  Henry. — A  translation 
and  free  use  of  the  Bible  prescribed. — The  "whip  with  six  cords." 
— The  Litany. — The  Reformation  under  Henry  not  doctrinal. — 
Executions  in  his  reign    ,    .  .  .  .    pp.  270 — 307 

CHAPTER  n. 

Ultra-Reform. — Edward  VI. 

Three  Parties  in  the  Church. — Violence  of  the  Sectarians. — Ra- 
pacity of  the  Protector  Somerset. — Confiscation  of  the  remaining 
Chantries. — Bishops  required  to  take  out  new  Commissions. — The 


CONTENTS. 


XIU 


Protector  determines  on  a  General  Visitation,  and  issues  Injunctions 
to  the  Visitors. — Change  as  to  issuing  the  conge  d'^lire. — Reception 
under  Two  Kinds  sanctioned. — Four  petitions  from  Convocation. — 
The  First  Prayer-Book  of  King  Edward  VI. — Not  a  new  book,  but 
the  adaptation  of  the  old  "  Sarum  Use." — Marriage  of  the  Clergy- 
sanctioned. — Cranmer's  Catechism. — Foreigners  in  England  object 
to  the  Prayer-Book. — Second  Prayer-Book  and  second  Act  of  Uni- 
formity.—  The  two  Books  compared. — The  forty-two  Articles.— 
"  Reformatio  Legum  Ecclesisticarum  "        .  .    pp.308 — 327 

CHAPTER  III. 

The  Romanist  Reaction. — Mary, 

All  the  early  Reformers  persecutors. — Gardiner  made  Lord  Chan- 
cellor.—  Character  of  Gardiner. — Of  Bonner. — Parliament  ratifies 
the  marriage  of  Henry  and  Katharine. — Convocation  meets  without 
the  Royal  Licence  and  annuls  the  Statutes  made  under  Edward. 
— Cardinal  Pole  arrives  in  England  as  the  Pope's  Legate,  and  re- 
ceives the  Nation  back  into  Communion  with  Rome.  —  Several 
Bishops  and  others  seek  refuge  on  the  Continent. — Many  who 
remain  at  home  provoke  the  Queen  and  Pole. — Many  executions. 
— Latimer  and  Ridley  executed  at  Oxford. — Cranmer's  courage 
fails  him,  and  he  recants. — He  recants  his  recantation,  and  is  exe- 
cuted.— Pole  succeeds  him  as  Archbishop. — Mary  takes  Pole's  part 
against  the  Pope      .  .  .  .  •    PP-  328 — 338 

CHAPTER  IV. 

The  Roman  Schism,  and  the  Rise  of  Puritanism. — 
Elizabeth. 

Coronation  of  Elizabeth. — The  Queen  proceeds  cautiously  in  the 
work  of  Reformation. — Insolent  conduct  of  the  Pope. — The  Queen 
refuses  the  title  of  Supreme  Head  of  the  Church. — A  proviso  made 
in  the  Supremacy  Act. — The  Prayer-Book  Revision  Committee. — 
The  Queen  and  Cecil  wish  to  re-introduce  the  First  Prayer-Book  of 
King  Edward  VI. — Her  Council,  however,  recommend  the  Second. 
— The  Second  Prayer-Book  with  certain  alterations,  and  a  return 
to  the  Ornaments  prescribed  under  the  First  Book,  probably  at  the 
suggestion  of  the  Queen,  is  annexed  to  the  new  Act  of  Uniformity. 
— Commissioners  furnished  with  fifty-three  Injunctions  appointed  to 
make  a  visitation  of  the  country. — They  find  the  new  Prayer-Book 


xiv 


CONTENTS. 


willingly  received  by  the  Laity,  by  nearly  all  the  Clergy,  and  a  vast 
majority  of  Romanists.— Pope  Pius  IV.  expresses  his  willingness  to 
accept  it,  if  the  Queen  would  acknowledge  his  supremacy. — No 
difficulty  in  finding  Bishops  to  consecrate  Parker  as  Archbishop. — 
Other  Bishops  consecrated. — The  Nag's  Head  Fable.— The  Thirty- 
nine  Articles.— The  Bishops'  Bible.— The  Advertisements.— Pro- 
bably never  seen  by  the  Queen,  and  issued  only  with  the  authority 
of  the  Bishops. — Foreign  Seminaries.  —Pius  V.  excommunicates  the 
Queen. — Political  prosecutions  of  Romanists. — Amalgamation  of 
ultra-Protestant  sects  under  the  name  of  Puritans. — Tenets  of  the 
Puritans.  —  They  find  a  leader  in  Cartvvright.  —  Establishment  of 
Presbyteries. — Parker  succeeded  by  Grindall. — Whitgift. — The  Lam- 
beth Articles. — Jewell. — Hooker     .  .  •    PP-  339 — 368 

CHAPTER  V. 

The  Growth  of  Puritanism. — James  I. 

The  Millenary  Petition. —  The  Hampton  Court  Conference. — 
Alterations  made  in  the  Prayer-Book.  —  Canons  of  1604.  —  The 
English  Bible. — Gunpowder  Plot. — The  oath  of  allegiance. — Book 
of  Sports. — James  sends  deputies  to  the  Synod  of  Dort. — Breach 
between  the  Puritans  and  the  Church  widened  during  James's  reign. 
— Primacy  of  Abbot  favoured  the  Puritans  .  .    pp.369 — 381 

CHAPTER  VL 

Charles  L — The  Triumph  of  Puritanism. 

Embarrassed  state  of  the  country. — Unpopularity  of  Charles's  mar- 
riage.— The  Puritans  form  a  majority  in  the  House  of  Commons. — 
The  Commons  set  forth  a  list  of  their  grievances.  —  Parliament 
usurps  the  functions  of  Convocation  in  the  case  of  Montagu. — 
Laud,  with  the  Bishops  of  Oxford  and  Rochester,  complain  of  their 
conduct. — Parliament  refuses  to  vote  sufficient  supplies,  and  is  dis- 
solved.— New  Parliament. —  Erastianism  of  Sibthorpe  and  Main- 
waring. — Suspension  of  Abbot. — Mainwaring  fined  and  suspended 
by  the  House  of  Commons,  but  made  Bishop  of  St.  David's. — Laud 
promoted  to  the  See  of  London.  —  The  Petition  of  Right.  —  The 
Remonstrance  of  the  Commons. — No  Parliament  between  1629  and 
1640.  —  Laud  prefixes  the  Royal  Declaration  to  the  Thirty-nine 
Articles. — The  Vow. — Laud  promoted  to  Canterbury. — Laud  and 


CONTENTS. 


XV 


Strafford  the  King's  principal  advisers. — Republication  of  the  Book 
of  Sports.  —  The  Histriomastix. — Severe  punishment  of  Prynne, 
Bastwick,  and  Burton. — Laud's  endeavours  to  introduce  greater 
reverence  into  the  Church's  services.  —  Character  of  the  Scotcli 
people. — Unsuccessful  attempt  to  introduce  the  Liturgy  into  Scot- 
land.— The  Solemn  League  and  Covenant. — The  King  sanctions 
the  Covenant. — The  Short  Parliament. — Convocation  and  Parlia- 
ment.—  The  "et  C^etera"  oath. — The  Long  Parliament.  —  Laud 
committed  to  the  Tower.  —  The  Committee  of  Religion.  —  The 
Smectymnuan  controversy. — The  High  Commission  Court  and  Star 
Chamber  abolished. — The  King  confirms  the  abolition  of  Episcopacy 
in  Scotland  ; — But  refuses  to  do  so  in  England. — New  Bishops  ap- 
pointed.— The  Grand  Remonstrance. — War  between  the  King  and 
Parliament  inevitable. — The  Root  and  Branch  Bill  passed. — West- 
minster Assembly  of  Divines. — The  Directory  for  Public  Worship. — 
Committee  for  the  removal  of  scandalous  Ministers. — Execution  of 
Laud.  —  His  Life  and  Character.  —  Oliver  Cromwell.  —  Execution 
of  the  King  .....    pp.  382 — 409 

CHAPTER  VIL 

The  Completion  of  the  Reformation,  and  the  last 
Act  of  Uniformity. — Charles  IL 

The  Triers.— Restoration  of  Charles  H. — Appointment  of  Bishops. 
— Declaration  from  Breda. — Assembly  at  Sion  College. — The  Savoy 
Conference. — A  Review  of  the  Prayer-Book  determined  on,  and 
a  direction  sent  to  Convocation  for  that  purpose. — The  work  unani- 
mously subscribed  by  both  Houses  of  Convocation. — The  Lord 
Chancellor  returns  thanks  to  Convocation  for  the  care  bestowed 
upon  it. — The  Commons  accept  it  without  debate. — A  via  media 
adopted  as  to  the  Ornaments  Rubric. — The  last  Act  of  Uniformity. 
— Black  Bartholomew. — First  Conventicle  Act. — Five  Mile  Act. — 
Second  Conventicle  Act— The  King  favours  Toleration. — The  Duke 
of  York  declares  himself  a  convert  to  Rome. — The  Test  and  Cor- 
poration Acts. — Sancroft  succeeds  Sheldon  as  archbishop. — Titus 
Oates. — The  Exclusion  Bill  rejected  in  the  House  of  Lords — Death 
of  Charles  H. — Noble  array  of  English  Divines  during  the  reign. — 
New  school  of  Latitudinarians        .  .  .    pp.410 — 426 


I 


xvi 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

The  Attempt  to  Undo  the  Reformation. — James  II. 

James's  Declaration. — Resolves  to  establish  Romanism. — Deter- 
mines to  get  rid  of  the  Test  Act. — Defeated  in  Parliament,  which 
he  dissolves. — Jefferies  appointed  Lord  Chancellor. — All  the  high 
places  in  the  State  conferred  on  Romanists. — High  Court  of  Com- 
mission revived. — Compton,  Bishop  of  London,  its  first  victim. — 
James's  Declaration  of  Indulgence. — A  Romanist  appointed  Dean 
of  Christ  Church. — The  Master  of  University  College  a  Romanist. 
— James  attacks  the  Universities. — Magdalen  College,  Oxford. — 
The  Roman  Mass  celebrated  in  the  college  chapel. — The  Declara- 
tion of  Indulgence  ordered  to  be  read  in  the  churches. — A  Remon- 
strance from  the  Bishops  presented  to  the  King. — Seven  Bishops 
committed  to  the  Tower. — Their  trial  and  acquittal. — The  Prince 
of  Orange  lands  in  England. — Flight  of  the  King    .    pp.  427 — 440 

CHAPTER  IX. 

Comprehension  and  Toleration. — William  and  Mary. 

The  Bishops  and  Clergy  required  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance 
to  the  new  Sovereigns. — The  Non-jurors. — Other  Non-juring  Bishops 
consecrated. — The  names  "  High  Church  "  and  "  Low  Church." — 
The  new  King  favours  the  Latitudinarians  and  Dissenters. — Bishop 
Burnet. — The  Comprehension  Bill. — Passes  the  Lords,  but  the 
Commons  reject  it. — The  Toleration  Act  passed. — Unitarians  and 
Romanists  excluded  from  its  benefits. — Severe  penalties  against 
the  latter. — Proposed  changes  in  the  Prayer-Book  come  to  nothing. 
— Meeting  of  Convocation. — "  Nolumus  leges  Angliee  mutari." — 
The  Lower  House  refuses  to  join  the  Upper  in  designating  the 
English  Church  Protestant. — Parliament  prorogued  for  ten  years. — 
The  King  appoints  Latitudinarian  Bishops. —  Severance  between  the 
Bishops  and  their  Clergy.  —  Tillotson,  Primate.  —  Is  succeeded  by 
Tenison. — The  Convocation  controversy    .  .    pp.  441 — 452 


PART  I. 


Zbc  Briti0b  Cburcb, 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  FOUNDATION  OF  THE  BRITISH  CHURCH. 

TT  would  be  interesting  to  know  for  certain  by  whom 
Christianity  was  introduced  into  this  country ;  but, 
unfortunately,  all  native  documents  of  the  early  British 
Church  have  been  lost%  whilst  the  information  which 
is  gleaned  from  other  sources  is  frequently  so  mixed 
up  with  spurious  documents  and  monkish  fables,  as  to 
throw  suspicion  on  what  otherwise  would  be  accepted 
as  a  trustworthy  foundation.  Our  earliest  native  his- 
torian, Gildas^  sadly  laments  the  want  of  any  do- 
mestic records  from  which  he  could  derive  certain 
information.  He  says  :  "If  there  were  any,  they  have 
either  been  consumed  in  the  fires  of  the  enemy,  or 
have  accompanied  my  exiled  countrymen  into  distant 
lands,  so  that  none  of  them  are  to  be  founds"  He 
was,  therefore,  obliged  to  be  "  guided  by  the  relations 
of  foreign  writers,  which,  being  broken  and  inter- 
rupted in  many  places,  are  therefore  by  no  means 
clear."  The  numerous  wars  in  which  this  country  has 
been  engaged,  and  the  various  nationalities — Celts, 
Romans,  Saxons,  Danes,  Normans — which  at  different 
times  have  occupied  it ;  the  Diocletian  and  other  per- 

*  Bede's  Ecclesiastical  History,  together  with  the  Anglo-Saxon  Chro- 
nicle, are  the  chief  sources  of  the  early  history  of  England. 

*  Gildas  wrote  about  A.D.  550. 

'  "  Scripta  patriae,  scriptorumve  monumenta,  si  quae  fuerint,  aut  igni- 
bus  hostium  exusta,  aut  civium  exulum  classe  longius  deportata,  non 
comparent." 

n.  B 


2 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  : 


secutions,  during  which  care  was  taken  to  destroy 
all  the  monuments  which  concerned  the  Christian 
churches ;  above  all,  the  destruction  of  the  monas- 
teries ;  by  such  and  other  causes,  we  can  conceive 
every  vestige  of  its  antiquity,  every  document  con- 
nected with  its  early  history,  and  the  succession  of  its 
Bishops,  to  have  been  burnt,  or  otherwise  destroyed. 
We  must,  therefore,  content  ourselves  with  such  scanty 
testimony  from  foreign  sources  as  we  can  command ; 
and  this  testimony,  if  it  does  not  establish  the  exact 
date  of  its  foundation,  at  the  least  establishes  three 
points :  first,  the  extreme  antiquity  of  the  British 
Church  ;  second,  that  it  is  of  Eastern,  and  not  West- 
ern origin  ;  third,  that  it  was  not  originally  subject  to 
any  foreign  jurisdiction. 

A  few  words  are  necessary  as  to  the  state  of  the 
country  before  the  introduction  of  Christianity. 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that  the  present  inhabitants 
are  not  the  aborigines  of  the  land.  We  are,  by  far  the 
greater  part  of  us,  Germans.  England,  or  as  it  was 
originally.  Angle,  or  Engle-lond,  is  the  land  of  the 
Angles,  a  German  tribe ;  the  Germans  who  conquered 
Britain,  swept  its  former  inhabitants  off  the  face  of  the 
land,  and  introduced  a  new  race,  a  new  language,  new 
institutions,  and  a  new  religion ;  and  ever  since  that 
first  immigration,  every  new  infusion  of  blood,  the 
Dane,  the  Norseman,  even  the  French-speaking  Nor- 
man, have  only  added  to  the  Teutonic  identity. 

The  earliest  inhabitants  of  whom  we  read  were 
Celts,  or  Gauls    a  people  of  the  same  stock  as  the 

*  Ancient  historians,  Greek  and  Latin,  class  Britons  and  Gauls  to- 
gether. Appian,  de  Bell.  Civ.j  Strabo ;  Tacitus  {A^fi'c.)  says,  "  in  uni- 
versum  tamen  asstimanti,  Gallos  vicinum  solum  occupasse  credibile  est. 
Eorum  sacra  deprehendas  .  .  .  sermo  haud  multum  diversus." 


ITS  FOUNDATION. 


3 


Cimmerians,  or  Gommerians,  the  descendants  of  Co- 
rner, the  son  of  Japheth,  who  were  found  here  by 
the  Phoenicians the  earhest  traders  with  the  island, 
and  seem  to  have  come  from  the  adjacent  Con- 
tinent about  B.C.  600.  We  read  of  the  Cimmerians 
being  a  powerful  nation  in  Western  Asia  between 
B.C.  800 — 600,  occupying  the  country  of  which  the 
modern  Sebastopol  is  the  central  point.  These  Cim- 
merians being  hard  pushed  by  the  Scythians  from 
the  East,  went,  as  was  always  the  custom  with  Asiatic 
hordes,  westward  :  on  their  way  to  Britain,  they  would 
pass  through  Gaul,  which  lies  in  a  direct  line  between 
the  cradle  of  the  human  race  and  Britain  :  hence  the 
various  points  of  affinity  between  the  early  inhabitants 
of  the  country,  and  the  countries  of  the  neighbouring 
Continent ;  the  same  language,  the  same  manners,  the 
same  monarchical  form  of  government,  and  the  same 
religion. 

Our  knowledge  of  the  earliest  inhabitants  of  the 
country  we  derive  almost  entirely  from  Julius  Caesar, 
before  whose  time  the  country  was  little  known  to  the 
world ;  and  from  his  account,  the  character  of  the 
people  was  about  as  barbarous  as  it  could  be.  It 
must,  however,  be  borne  in  mind,  that  Caesar's  stay  in 
the  island  was  only  of  short  duration,  and  his  ex- 
perience limited  to  a  small  part  of  it.  The  most 
civilized  portion  of  the  inhabitants  were  those  who 
lived  nearest  to  Gaul,  the  people  of  Kent  and  the 

'  The  Phoenicians  are  supposed  to  have  come  here  about  B.C.  1000,  from 
Gades,  or  Cadiz,  for  the  purpose  of  buying  tin  ;  they  probably  wished  to 
monopohse  the  trade,  and  made  a  secret  of  the  place  whence  their  goods 
were  brought,  so  that  we  derive  from  them  little  information  as  to  the 
island.  Hence  it  is  that  Herodotus  (iii.  15)  expressed  his  inability  to  say 
more  of  the  Cassiterides  (or  tin  islands),  than  that  these  were  situated 
in  the  extreme  West. 

B  2 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH 


southern  coast.  But  no  one  would  go  to  the  island 
who  could  avoid  it^;  the  people  generally  were  very 
barbarous ;  they  clothed  themselves  in  the  skins  of 
wild  animals,  wore  their  hair  long,  and  dyed  their 
bodies  with  woad  ^,  which  made  them  of  a  bluish 
colour,  and  an  object  of  terror  to  their  enemies ;  they 
had  wives  in  common,  and  their  domestic  arrange- 
ments generally  were  of  the  most  promiscuous  cha- 
racter. 

The  primitive  religion  of  the  people  was  Druidism, 
the  chief  abode  of  which  was  in  the  island  of  Anglesea. 
Alone,  conspicuous  for  knowledge,  stood  the  Druids, 
the  prophets  and  priests  ;  and  the  bards,  the  poets  and 
historians  of  the  people.  The  Druids  formed  a  sepa- 
rate caste ;  were  freed  from  war,  and  the  payment  of 
taxes,  and  were  held  in  great  fear  and  honour  by  the 
people.  They  decided  all  cases  and  controversies, 
and  inflicted  punishment  at  their  own  discretion  ;  who- 
soever disobeyed  them  was  deprived  of  all  rights, 
and  denied  the  protection  of  the  law ;  he  was  held  as 
impious  and  excommunicate,  and  his  presence  shunned 
from  fear  of  contagion.  They  also  were  the  instruc- 
tors of  the  young.  No  species  of  superstition  ever 
was  more  terrible  than  that  of  the  Druids,  no  idola- 
trous worship  ever  gained  such  an  ascendancy  over  its 
votaries ;  for  by  the  doctrine  of  the  transmigration  of 
souls  they  stimulated  the  fears  of  the  people,  and 

'  "Neque  enim  temere  prjEter  mercatores  adit  quisquam." — (Co»!. '\\:2o.) 
Diodorus  Siculus,  however,  says,  "  They  who  live  near  the  promontory  of 
Britain,  which  is  called  Belerium  (Land's  end),  are  particularly  fond  of 
strangers,  and  from  their  intercourse  with  foreign  merchants,  civilized  in 
their  habits." 

«  Britannia  is  probably  derived  from  "  Brith,"  an  old  British  word 
which  signifies  "painted;"  for  the  same  reason,  the  extra-provincial 
Britons  were  called  "  Picts." 


ITS  FOUNDATION, 


5 


could  thus  impose  upon  them  the  strictest  obedience 
to  their  will.  But  as  their  system  was  never  com- 
mitted to  writing,  and  only  communicated  to  the 
initiated  under  the  strictest  obligations  of  secresy, 
very  little  is  known  of  their  worship  and  ceremonies  ; 
the  only  sources  of  information  being  a  few  notices  in 
the  Classics,  and  the  Latin  inscriptions  of  Gaul,  derived 
probably  from  the  infractions  of  their  obligations,  after 
their  superstitions  became  weakened  by  the  influences 
of  Christianity.  That  their  religion  was  a  Polytheism 
appears  certain  ^  Caesar  identifies  their  gods  with 
Mercury,  Apollo,  Mars,  Jupiter,  and  Minerva ;  be- 
sides these,  or  differing  perhaps  in  name,  were,  An- 
draste,  "the  Goddess  of  Victory;"  Hu,  "the  mighty;" 
and  Beal,  or  Belinus,  in  whose  honour  they  made  the 
people  to  pass  through  fire,  a  worship  evidently  de- 
rived from  the  Baal  of  the  Phoenicians  ^ ;  as  the  three 
chief  gods,  Lucan  mentions  Teutates  the  Father,  Hesus 
the  God  of  Heaven,  and  Taranis  the  Thunderer,  They 
held  the  doctrine  of  vicarious  atonement,  and,  like  other 
idolaters,  thought  the  only  way  to  appease  Heaven 
was  by  means  of  human  sacrifices ;  this  they  did 
when  some  great  crime  had  been  committed,  or  some 
important  enterprise  was  to  be  undertaken.  Having 
made  a  huge  figure  of  basket-work  in  the  shape  of 
a  man,  they  thrust  into  it  as  many  people  as  it  would 
hold  ;  those  selected  for  the  purpose  were  generally 
thieves,  criminals,  or  prisoners  taken  in  war,  but  if 

Although  some  suppose  they  worshipped  only  one  God.  "  Druides 
unum  esse  Deum  semper  inculcarunt ; "  Camden,  and  Bishop  Godwin; 
an  opinion  from  which  the  Church  historian,  Fuller  (B.  I.  c.  i.  sect.  2) 
thoroughly  disagrees. 

'  Traces  of  a  temple  to  Diana,  and  bones  of  victims  offered  in  sacrifice 
to  her,  were  discovered  in  London  in  the  reign  of  Edward  I. ;  some  even 
derive  the  name  London  from  Llan  Dian^  "temple  of  Diana." — (Fuller, 
B.  L  c.  i.) 


6 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  : 


these  were  wanting,  then  the  innocent  ;  they  then 
heaped  up  wood  around  it,  and  set  light  to  it  till 
the  whole  was  consumed,  whilst  they  inspected  the 
quivering  flesh  of  their  victims,  as  a  means  of  ascer- 
taining futurity. 

Such  was  the  condition,  and  such  the  religion,  of  the 
country  when  the  attention  of  the  Romans  was  first 
drawn  to  it  in  a.d.  55 ;  and  Julius  Caesar,  having 
overrun  Gaul,  made  two  successive  descents  on  its 
shores,  defeated  the  Britons,  and  penetrated  beyond 
the  Thames.  But  Caesar  by  no  means  met  with  the 
success  which  usually  attended  his  arms*^;  the  civil 
wars  which  arose  at  Rome  averted  the  attention  of 
the  emperors  from  the  island,  and  it  was  not  till 
nearly  a  hundred  years  later,  that  in  the  reign  of 
Claudius,  effectual  means  were  adopted  for  its  sub- 
jugation. Several  battles  were  fought  with  unequal 
success  ;  in  one  Caractacus  was  defeated,  and  taken 
prisoner  to  Rome,  but  the  Britons  were  not  even 
then  subdued  :  not  till  a.d.  78  was  its  conquest  com- 
pleted, by  Agricola,  the  father-in-law  of  the  historian 
Tacitus,  when  Britain  was  reduced  to,  and  remained, 
a  Roman  province  for  more  than  three  hundred  years  \ 
As  was  the  custom  of  Rome  with  regard  to  the  na- 
tions which  she  conquered,  she  brought  her  religion 
with  her.  To  Rome  the  bloody  superstition  of  the 
Druids  had  long  been  particularly  hateful,  and  had 
already  been  proscribed  by  Augustus,  Tiberius,  and 

"  Invictus  Romano  marte  Britannus." — (Tibullus.) 

*  Even  then  the  northern  part  remained  unconquered,  and  constantly 
harassed  the  south  with  attacks. 

°  So  much  was  this  the  case,  that  throughout  the  whole  extent  of  the 
Roman  empire,  there  was  but  little  variation  from  the  cult  observed  in 
the  Capital.  Even  at  Jerusalem,  where  the  distant  colony  of  ^lia  Capi- 
tolina  was  founded,  a  temple  to  Jupiter  was  erected  on  the  site  of  the 
holy  Temple. 


ITS  FOUNDATION. 


7 


Claudius ;  for  some  time  longer  it  remained  undis- 
turbed in  the  remote  regions  of  Scotland  and  Ireland, 
but  in  the  south  it  was  exterminated,  only  however 
to  be  succeeded  by  another  superstition,  more  refined 
perhaps,  but  not  less  idolatrous,  and  scarcely  less  cruel 
than  that  which  it  displaced,  paganism. 

Meanwhile,  the  greatest  events  in  the  world's  his- 
tory had  been  transpiring  in  the  East — the  birth, 
death,  and  resurrection  of  our  Lord,  and  the  foun- 
dation of  the  Christian  Church  at  Jerusalem  on  the 
day  of  Pentecost. 

•  ••••• 

By  whom  was  Christianity  introduced  into  Eng- 
land ?  To  enable  us  to  answer  the  question,  we 
have,  it  is  true,  no  positive  evidence ;  but  we  have 
an  authority  which,  from  its  cumulative  weight,  is 
more  substantial  than  that  on  which  important  points 
of  history  often  have  been,  and  are,  established  °. 

Justin  Martyr,  writing  a  little  more  than  a  century 
after  our  Saviour's  crucifixion,  says  that  Christians 
were  to  be  found  in  every  country  known  to  the 
Romans.  Irenaeus,  who  was  born  a.d.  97,  and  lived 
for  ninety  years,  not  only  asserts  that  the  Church  was 
extended  by  the  Apostles  to  the  utmost  bounds  of  the 
earth,  but  he  includes  in  it  the  Celts,  and  amongst 
these  (especially  in  connexion  with  the  words  of  Jus- 
tin Martyr)  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  he  included 
the  Celts  of  Britain. 

Tertullian,  who  wrote  at  the  end  of  the  second,  or 
beginning  of  the  third  century  °,  speaks  of  British  dis- 

"  The  reader,  however,  for  the  opposite  view,  is  referred  to  the  "  Re- 
mains of  the  late  A.  W.  Haddan,"  p.  211. 

°  That  is  shortly  after  the  time  of  Pope  Eleutherius,  during  whose  pon- 
tificate King  Lucius  is  supposed  to  have  lived. 


8 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  : 


tricts,  inaccessible  to  Roman  arms  ^  yet  being  subjected 
to  Christ ;  and  if  such  remote  districts  had  embraced 
the  faith,  we  may  conclude  that  in  the  more  accessible 
parts  it  was  firmly,  and  for  a  long  time,  established. 

Origen,  about  240,  says,  that  the  power  of  our 
Saviour's  kingdom  reached  as  far  as  Britain,  which 
appeared  to  lie  in  another  part  of  the  world 

There  is  no  one  whose  authority  on  the  subject  is 
more  valuable  than  Eusebius'.  He  was  the  friend  of 
Constantine,  the  first  Christian  emperor,  who  was  born 
and  proclaimed  emperor  in  Britain  ;  he  was  present 
at  the  Council  of  Nice,  whither  Bishops  were  assem- 
bled from  all  parts  of  the  empire ;  he  had  reason  for 
examining  the  history  of  the  different  churches,  with 
a  view  to  writing  his  ecclesiastical  polity.  Having 
named  the  Romans,  Persians,  Armenians,  Parthians, 
Indians,  and  Scythians,  he  says  that  some  of  the  Apo- 
stles crossed  the  ocean,  "  to  those  which  are  called  the 
British  islands ;"  which  is  confirmed  by  Theodoret, 
who  says  that  .some  of  the  Apostles  brought  the 
Gospel  to  all  men,  and  persuaded  not  only  the  Ro- 
mans, but  the  Britons'' y  and  Cimbrians,  and  Germans, 
and  in  a  word  every  nation  and  race  of  men,  "  to 
receive  the  laws  of  the  Crucified  One." 

From  the  authorities  above  cited  (even  if  there 
were  no  others),  there  can  be  no  reasonable  ground 
for  doubting  that  the  British  Church  was  not  only 
of  very  ancient,  but  also  of  Apostolical  foundation. 
A  Roman  Catholic  writer,  not  generally  very  favour- 

p  "Britannorum  inaccessa  Romanis  loca,  Christo  vero  subdita." — (Ter- 
tull.  ad  Judceos.) 

1  "  Qui  ab  orbenostroin  Britannia dividuntur." — (Orig.Hom.VI.  inLuc.) 

(TTi  Tas  Ka\ovfi€uas  BperraviKas  vfjcrovs. 
^  Bperavvovs — Koi  aira^anXais  Trav  'ddi/os  kcu  yivos  dvdpaTrav  de^aadai  tov 

^TavpUldtVTOS  ToilS  UOjlOVS. 


ITS  FOUNDATION. 


9 


able  to  the  Anglican  Church,  whose  testimony  on 
that  account  is  the  more  valuable,  readily  admits 
this  :  "  It  is  probable,"  he  says,  "  that  Christianity 
was  disseminated  over  parts  of  England  during  the 
Apostolic  age.  This  was  tiniversally  believed  by  our 
ancestors.  .  .  The  documents  on  which  the  history  of 
the  first  conversion  of  England  depend,  approach 
much  nearer  than  those  of  the  ancient  Romans  to 
historical  cei^titude 

But,  allowing  that  the  British  Church  was  of  Apo- 
stolic foundation,  to  which  of  the  Apostles  is  it  to  be 
attributed  ? 

The  traditions  respecting  SS.  James  the  son 
of  Zebedee,  Simon  Zelotes,  and  Aristobulus  are 
improbable.  St.  James  suffered  martyrdom  before 
the  dispersion  of  the  Apostles,  and  Simon  Zelotes 
was  martyred  in  Persia.  It  is  the  opinion  of  some 
that  the  Gospel  was  preached  here  at  the  latter  end 
of  the  reign  of  Tiberius,  a.d,  37,  through  the  dis- 
persion of  the  Christians  after  the  martyrdom  of 
St.  Stephen  ;  but  it  is  difficult  to  reconcile  this 
with  Acts  xi.  19  :  "  Now  they  which  were  scattered 
abroad  upon  the  persecution  that  arose  about  Ste- 
phen, travelled  as  far  as  Phenice,  and  Cyprus,  and 
Antioch,  preaching  the  word  to  7ione  but  tmto  the 
Jews  only!' 

Of  all  scriptural  persons,  Joseph  of  Arimathaea" 
has  been  more  particularly  regarded  as  the  Apostle 
of  Britain,  and  the  founder  of  Glastonbury  Abbey. 
There  is  an  ancient  tradition  that  the  Jews,  bear- 
ing a  special  enmity  against  SS.  Philip,  Joseph  of  Ari- 

'  Butler's  Book  of  the  Roman  Church. 

"  At  the  Council  of  Basle,  the  English  Bishops  claimed  precedence,  on 
account  of  the  conversion  of  their  country  by  St.  Joseph. — (Fuller,  iv.  i8o.) 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH 


mathsea,  Lazarus,  Mary  Magdalene  and  Martha  his 
sisters,  banished  them,  with  Marcella  their  ser- 
vant, and  put  them  out  to  sea  in  a  vessel  without 
sails  and  oars.  The  vessel  arrived  safely  at  Mar- 
seilles, of  which  Lazarus  became  Bishop ;  St.  Philip 
remained  in  France,  but  sent  Joseph  of  Arimathsea, 
with  eleven  companions,  to  preach  the  Gospel  in  Bri- 
tain :  they  received  from  Arviragus,  a  king  of  the 
country,  a  grant  of  the  island  then  called  Avalon, 
but  now  Glastonbury,  where  the  first  Christian  church 
was  built,  and  dedicated  to  the  Virgin  Mary. 

Now,  that  the  church  of  Glastonbury  was  the  oldest 
Christian  church  in  Britain  (many  say  in  the  whole 
world)  there  are  abundant  proofs,  nay,  it  is  generally 
conceded ;  Archbishop  Usher  says  the  church  called 
by  the  Saxons  Glaston,  is  the  mother  church  of  the 
British  Isle  ;  Fuller,  that  if  credit  is  to  be  given  to 
ancient  authority,  it  is  the  oldest  church  in  the  world. 
The  testimonies  of  Joseph  of  Arimathaea  having  come 
here  are,  as  Archbishop  Usher  and  Bishop  Godwin 
assert,  numerous ;  it  is  also  worthy  of  notice  that 
Queen  Elizabeth  and  Archbishop  Parker"  claimed 
him  as  the  first  preacher  of  Christianity  in  Britain ; 
but  against  this  theory  goes  the  silence  of  the  Saxon 
authorities  ^.  Glastonbury  was  a  place  renowned  for 
sanctity  many  generations  before  the  Norman  con- 
quest ;  but  until  that  time,  no  connection  was  made  of 
the  story  of  Joseph  of  Arimathaea  with  that  place  ;  had 
Glastonbury  possessed  claims  of  such  a  venerable  cha- 
racter, it  is  scarcely  likely  the  Saxon  Chroniclers  would 
have  overlooked  them.    There  was  also  a  tradition  ^ 

"  Parker,  i.  139.  *  Stillingfleet,  Orig.  Britan.^  i.  4. 

Eus.,  Hist.  EccL,  v.  18. 


ITS  FOUNDATION. 


that  our  Saviour  commanded  the  Apostles  not  to  de- 
part from  Jerusalem  till  twelve  years  after  His  Ascen- 
sion ;  and  the  Alexandrine  Chronicle  states  that  they 
did  not  separate  till  after  the  Council  of  Jerusalem.  To 
meet  this,  those  who  favour  the  story  of  Joseph  of  Ari- 
mathaea  would  place  it  about  a.d.  62,  which  would 
make  Lazarus  and  Joseph  of  a  great  age  to  under- 
take so  long  a  journey.  There  are,  however,  strong 
authorities  in  its  favour,  which  cannot  lightly  be 
laid  aside. 

There  remain  two  others  who  are  said  to  have 
preached  in  Britain,  SS.  Peter  and  Paul.  As  to  the 
former,  the  authority  rests  chiefly  on  monkish  legends, 
Baronius,  however,  whilst  he  admits  that  St.  Peter 
spent  most  of  his  time  in  the  East,  yet  says  that 
about  A.D.  58  he  preached  in  the  West,  and  parti- 
cularly Britain.  The  only  authority  he  quotes  is 
Metaphrastes.  But  Metaphrastes  is  not  of  sufficient 
repute  to  establish  such  a  theory  on  his  sole  autho- 
rity :  Baronius  himself  accuses  him  of  misquotations 
from  Eusebius ;  he  also  says  of  him  afterwards  that 
"he  is  no  authority  in  these  matters."  Pope  Inno- 
cent has  also  been  quoted  in  favour  of  St.  Peter,  but 
without  reason  :  he  speaks  of  France,  Spain,  Africa, 
and  Sicily,  and  the  interjacent  islands,  as  being  con- 
verted by  St.  Peter  or  his  disciples  and  successors ; 
but  the  British  islands  cannot  geographically  come 
under  that  description.  There  is,  therefore,  no  suf- 
ficient evidence  to  lead  us  to  suppose  that  St.  Peter 
ever  came  to  Britain,  and  there  is  everything  to  lead 
us  to  the  opposite  conclusion.  St.  Paul  (Gal.  ii.  7) 
says  that  St.  Peter's  work  was  amongst  the  Jews,  as 
his  own  was  amongst  the  Gentiles  :  it  may  therefore 
be  taken  for  granted  that  the  work  of  the  former  was 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH, 


confined  to  those  countries  where  the  Jews  abounded. 
Accordingly,  Eusebius  from  Origen  affirms  that  St. 
Peter  preached  to  the  dispersed  Jews  in  Pontus,  Ga- 
latia,  Bithynia,  and  Cappadocia ;  and  Epiphanius,  that 
whilst  St.  Paul  travelled  towards  Spain,  St.  Peter  fre- 
quently visited  Pontus  and  Bithynia.  This  would  be 
agreeable  to  his  commission,  there  being  many  Jews 
in  those  parts ;  but  St.  Paul  tells  us  of  himself,  that 
when  he  essayed  to  go  into  Bithynia,  he  was  for- 
bidden by  the  Spirit,  and  ordered  to  go  into  Europe ; 
as  if  Asia  was  reserved  by  the  Spirit  for  St.  Peter, 
Europe  for  him.  It  is  not  probable  that  St.  Peter 
was  the  original  Apostle  in  Britain  ;  but  the  claim 
made  in  his  favour  by  Roman  Catholic  writers  is  use- 
ful in  one  way,  as  shewing  that,  even  on  their  autho- 
rity, the  foundation  of  the  Church  in  this  country  is 
of  equal  antiquity  with  that  of  Rome. 

There  remains,  therefore,  St.  Paul  ;  was  he  ever  in 
Britain  ?  If  the  words  of  important  authorities  are  to 
be  taken  in  their  literal  sense,  the  question  can  only 
be  answered  in  the  affirmative ;  if  any  other  inter- 
pretation is  to  be  put  on  them,  it  remains  to  see  which 
is  the  most  reasonable,  and  most  consonant  with  con- 
current evidence. 

In  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  written  from  Corinth 
before  he  went  to  Rome,  he  expresses  his  intention  of 
going  to  Spain,  and  of  visiting  Rome  on  his  way  ^. 
The  author  of  the  Muratorian  Canon,  written  about 
the  middle  of  the  second  century,  mentions  "  the 
journey  of  St.  Paul  setting  forth  from  the  city  (of 
Rome)  for  Spain  \"    There  is  good  authority  in  the 

"  Rom.  XV.  24,  "  Whensoever  I  take  my  journey  into  Spain,  I  will  come 
to  you;"  and  Rom.  xv.  28,  "  I  will  come  by  you  into  Spain." 
'  Routh's  Rel.  Sac,  i.  403. 


ITS  FOUNDATION. 


13 


Fathers  for  believing  that  by  Galatia,  mentioned 
2  Tim.  iv.  10,  Gaul  is  meant,  and  that  St.  Paul  came 
to  Gaul From  Gaul,  or  even  from  Spain,  the 
journey  to  Britain  was  not  difficult.  Accordingly, 
we  find  that — 

(i.)  Clemens  Romanus,  the  cotemporary  of  St.  Paul, 
whom  St.  Paul  calls  his  fellow-labourer'';  who  was 
also  Bishop  of  Rome,  that  is.  Bishop  of  the  city  in 
which  St.  Paul  suffered  martyrdom ;  who  had,  there- 
fore, every  opportunity  of  conversing  with,  and  being 
familiar  with  the  travels  and  actions  of,  St.  Paul ;  who, 
as  St.  Irenaeus  says  of  him,  had  been  conversant  with 
the  blessed  Apostles,  and  had  their  preaching  still 
ringing  in  his  ears,  and  their  traditions  before  his 
eyes ;  we  find  him  describing  St.  Paul's  sufferings 
with  the  greatest  minuteness  ^  ;  he  speaks  of  his 
"  having  become  the  herald  of  God  in  the  East  and 
in  the  West;"  of  his  "having  preached  righteousness 
to  the  whole  world,  and  having  come  to  the  limit 
of  the  West."  St.  Clement  was  writing  from  Rome, 
so  that  the  country  he  describes  must  be  considerably 
west  of  that  city.  Britain  at  the  time  was  well  known 
to  the  Romans  ;  it  had  been  the  scene  of  many  war- 
like actions  since  the  time  of  Claudius ;  it  was  a  Ro- 
man province,  the  station  of  a  Roman  garrison,  the 
residence  of  Roman  lieutenants  ;  two  Roman  colonies 
were  established  in  the  country,  one  at  London,  and 

Lightfoot,  Ep.  of  St.  Clement,  p.  50.  '  Phil.  iv.  3. 

IlavXos  vnoiiovrji  ^pa^eiov  vnecTxev,  firruKis  dfcrfxa  (poprjcras,  <pvya5fvdf\s, 
\i6a(r6i\s,  Krjpv^  yfvojjLevos  fv  tt)  avaToK?)  /cat  iv  Tjj  hvcrti,  to  yevvaiov  Tr)i 
Tri'cTTfajr  avrov  (tXt'oy  eXa^ov,  diKaiovavvrjv  Sibd^as  oXov  top  Kotr/ioc,  kol  eVi 
TO  Tepfia  T^s  diaecos  cXdiov  Koi  ixapTvpfjaat  eVt  tS)v  rjvovfiivoiv,  ovTots  d7r?;\- 
\ayr)  rov  Koap-ov,  koI  els  rov  ayiop  tojtov  (nopevdr),  vnopovrjs  yev6p.evos 
p.(yi<7Tos  viroypannos. — Clem.  Ep.  ad  Cor.  i.  15. 


14 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  : 


another  at  Camulodunum,  the  modern  Colchester.  It 
was  "the  limit  of  the  West;"  and  that  was  the  or- 
dinary way  of  describing  it  ^ ;  and  it  certainly  an- 
swers, more  than  any  other  country,  to  St.  Clement's 
description. 

(2.)  St.  Jerome,  who  resided  some  time  at  Rome, 
as  secretary  to  its  Bishop,  Damasus,  and  had  thus 
great  opportunities  of  knowing  the  local  traditions 
of  St.  Paul,  says  that  he  went  from  one  ocean  to  ano- 
ther, imitating  the  Sun  of  Righteousness  ;  and  that  his 
preaching  extended  as  far  as  the  earth  itself  Else- 
where, he  says  he  preached  the  Gospel  in  the  Western 
parts  ^ 

(3.)  Theodoret,  having  before  mentioned  that  some 
of  the  Apostles  preached  to  the  Britons,  afterwards 
says  that  St.  Paul,  at  the  time  of  his  journey  to 
Rome,  brought  salvation  "  to  the  islands  that  lie  in 
the  ocean  and  that  he  went  to  Spain,  and  from 
thence  carried  the  Gospel  to  other  nations  ^ 

(4.)  Venantius  Fortunatus,  a  poet  of  the  sixth  cen- 
tury, says  St.  Paul  passed  over  the  ocean  to  Britain, 
and  Thule,  and  the  ends  of  the  earth'. 

(5.)  Lastly,  Sophronius,  Patriarch  of  Jerusalem,  is 

°  Horace  speaks  of  the  Britons  as  "ultimos  orbis  Britannos ;"  and 
Catullus  as  "  ultimos  Britannos."  Herodotus  had  described  the  Celts 
of  the  Continent  as  the  most  Western  nation  ;  but  after  the  time  of  Ju- 
lius CtEsar,  the  Britons  became  known  to  the  Romans  as  a  still  more 
Western  nation. 

'  "  Ut  Evangelium  Christi  in  occidentis  quoque  partibus  prasdicaret." 
— (Hieron.  Catal.  Script.  Eccl.) 

^  Ety  ray  ^wavias  dcftiKfTo  Koi  rais  iv  rm  neXdyti  diaKCinevais  vfjaois  rfju 
w(peXiau  TrpocrrjveyKev. — (Interp.  in  Psalm  116.) 

Tay  2;rai'tay  KariXa^e  /cat  els  erepa  edvT]  bpa)xli>v  rijv  Trjs  SidaaKaXtas 
Xafindda  irpoa-rjVfyKt. — (Theod.  in  Ep.  II.  ad  Timoth.) 

'  "Transit  et  Oceanum,  vel  qua  facit  insula  portum, 

Quasque  Bretannus  habet  terras,  quasque  ultima  Thule." 


ITS  FOUNDATION, 


15 


quoted  by  the  Magdeburg  Centuriators,  as  bringing 
St.  Paul  to  Britain,  although  it  is  right  to  add,  the 
statement  is  not  found  in  the  extant  writings  of 
Sophronius  himself. 

(6.)  This  view  is  also  maintained  by  Archbishops 
Parker  and  Usher,  Bishop  Stillingfleet,  Camden,  Gib- 
son, Cave,  Nelson,  Burgess,  and  many  others  j.  But 
aofainst  this  view  of  the  older  writers,  are  to  be  set 
the  more  recent  investigations  of  such  learned  writers 
as  the  late  Mr.  Haddan  and  the  present  Regius  Pro- 
fessor of  Modern  History  at  Oxford. 

We  find  words  in  our  historian,  Gildas,  which,  in 
the  opinion  of  many,  fix  the  introduction  of  Chris- 
tianity into  Britain  at  this  very  time  :  "  In  the  mean- 
time" (i.e.  in  the  time  of  which  he  had  spoken  before, 
viz.  the  victory  gained  by  Suetonius  Paulinus  over 
Boadicea,  a.d.  61  \)  "Christ,  the  true  Sun,  for  the 
first  time  casts  its  rays,  that  is,  the  knowledge  of  His 
laws,  on  this  island,  shivering  with  icy  cold,  and  widely 
separated  from  the  visible  sun  ;  that  is  to  say,  not  from 
the  visible  firmament,  but  from  the  supreme,  everlast- 
ing power  of  heaven  \" 

^  Cf.  also  Bishop  Wordsworth's  Commentary  on  St.  Paul's  Epistles  : 
"a.d.  64  :  St.  Paul,  after  his  first  imprisonment  at  Rome,  goes  probably 
to  Spain,  and  perhaps  even  to  Britain." 
Stilling.,  Orig.  Britan.  6. 

'  The  whole  passage  is :  "  Interea  glaciali  frigore  rigenti  insulas,  et 
velut  longiore  terrarum  secessu  soli  visibili  non  proximse  verus  ille  Sol, 
non  de  firmamento  solum  temporali,  sed  de  summa  etiam  coelorum  arce 
cuncta  tempora  excedente,  orbi  universo  praefulgidum  sui  coruscum  os- 
tentans,  tempore  ut  scimus,  summo  Tiberii  Cassaris,  quo  absque  ullo 
impedimento  ejus  propagabatur  religio,  comminata,  senatu  nolente,  a 
principe  morte  dilatoribus  militum  ejusdem,  radios  suos  primum  indulget, 
id  est  sua  przecepta  Christus."  As  far  as  it  is  possible  to  make  anything 
out  of  this  flowery  and  obscure  sentence,  Gildas  appears  to  speak  of 
a  double  shining  of  the  Gospel,  one  general  at  the  end  of  the  reign  of 
Tiberius,  the  other,  A.D.  6i,  confined  to  Britain. 


i6 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  : 


In  order  that  we  may  form  a  just  estimate,  and  put 
a  right  interpretation  on  such  passages,  we  must  bear 
in  mind  the  state  of  the  world  at  that  time ;  how  there 
was  one  uninterrupted  Roman  empire,  stretching  from 
our  own  island  as  far  as  Persia  and  Ethiopia ;  how 
there  were  roads  throughout  this  vast  empire,  laid 
down  with  the  most  consummate  engineering  skill ; 
how  easily  and  safely  merchants  could  travel  along 
these  roads,  under  the  protection  of  one  law  and  one 
government ;  how  soldiers  were  constantly  passing 
to  and  fro,  from  one  part  of  the  empire  to  another  ; 
and  how  persecutions,  which  were  common  in  Rome, 
but  unknown  in  Britain,  would  induce  many  Chris- 
tians to  seek  a  refuge  in  this  country. 

There  were,  therefore,  many  means  by  which  com- 
munication could  be  kept  up  between  this  island  and 
St.  Paul  at  Rome.  Many  persons  who  had  heard  him 
must,  for  different  reasons,  have  travelled  hither  from 
Rome,  and  we  cannot  doubt  that  he  must  have  fre- 
quently been  informed  of  the  state  of  religion  in  the 
country,  and  been  pressed  to  visit  it.  It  is  said  that 
persons  of  rank  amongst  the  Roman  inhabitants,  and 
kings  of  different  provinces,  had  already  embraced  the 
yoke  of  Christ Caractacus,  after  being  defeated  in 
battle,  had  been  taken  prisoner  to  Rome,  and  there, 
together  with  his  father,  Bran",  a  Druidical  bard, 
had  been  converted.  Pomponia  Graecina,  the  wife  of 
Aulus  Plautius,  the  Roman  lieutenant  in  the  country, 
was  sister  to  Caractacus,  and  there  is  strong  reason 
for  believing  that  she  was  a  Christian".    Linus,  one 

Churton's  Early  English  Church. 
"  There  is  an  early  tradition  that  Bran,  after  his  conversion,  returned  to 
Britain,  and  converted  his  countrymen. 

"  She  is  accused  (Tac.  Ann.  13.  32)  of  "  externa  superstitio,"  which  was 


ITS  FOUNDATION. 


17 


of  the  sons  of  Caractacus,  was  consecrated  by  St.  Paul 
as  first  Bishop  of  Rome  p.  His  daughter  Gladys,  who 
with  Pomponia  Graecina,  is  supposed  to  have  been 
of  "  the  saints  of  Csesar's  household,"  soon  afterwards 
became  the  wife  of  Rufus  who  from  his  gentleness 
was  called  Pudens  ;  and  having  been  adopted  into 
Csesar's  household,  she  received  the  name  of  Clau- 
dia, and  according  to  Baronius  became  the  mother 
of  SS.  Timothy,  Novatus,  Pudentiana,  and  Praxedes, 
who,  if  we  can  believe  the  Roman  martyrologies,  were 
instructed  in  the  faith  by  St.  Paul,  and  all  of  whom, 
together  with  their  father,  Rufus,  and  their  uncle,  Li- 
nus, at  different  times  suffered  martyrdom. 

Much  of  this,  resting  as  it  does  on  supposition, 
rather  than  direct  records,  is,  of  course,  unsatisfactory 
as  historical  evidence.  The  coincidence  of  the  names 
of  the  Claudia  and  Pudens  of  St.  Paul  with  the  Claudia 
and  Pudens  of  Martial  is,  to  say  the  least,  striking  ; 
but,  at  the  same  time,  in  coming  to  a  right  conclusion, 
we  must  bear  in  mind  that  the  date  of  St.  Paul's  Epistle 
is  A.D.  67,  whereas  Martial's  Odes  maybe  presumed  to 
have  been  written  between  a.d.  83  and  a.d.  97. 

We  cannot  doubt  that  St.  Paul  must  have  received 
many  pressing  invitations  to  visit  Britain,  and  that, 
prompted  by  his  zeal  for  spreading  the  Gospel  of 
Christ,  he  may  have  availed  himself  of  the  oppor- 

the  manner  in  which  the  Romans  would  describe  Christianity.  But 
against  this,  see  Haddan,  Remains^  p.  229. 

P  Clemens  Romanus  calls  him  "  Sanctissimus  Linus  frater  ClaudiiE." 
'  "Claudia,  Rufe,  meo  rw^-iM  peregrina  Pudenti." — (Martial.  Epigr.  13 
ad  Ruf.)    From  another  epigram  it  appears  (supposing,  that  is,  of  course 
that  Martial  is  referring  to  the  same  Claudia  in  both  epigrams)  that  the 
country  to  which  this  foreign  lady  belonged  was  Britain ;  Lib.  xi.  epig.  53  : 
"  Claudia  casruleis  cum  sit  Rufina  Britaimis 
Edita." 

'  Mentioned  2  St.  Tim.  iv.  21,  and  Rom.  xvi.  13. 

C 


i8 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  : 


tunity  afforded  him  of  visiting  the  furthest  bounds 
of  the  Roman  empire  ;  so  that,  agreeably  to  the  many 
authorities  quoted  above  (not  any  one  singly,  but  all 
cumulatively),  notwithstanding  the  opposite  opinion 
held  by  recent  critics,  it  is  not  an  altogether  unrea- 
sonable presumption,  although  we  cannot  say  there  is 
any  historical  proof,  that  he  did  preach  in  Britain. 

Everything  points  to  the  connexion  of  the  British 
Church  with  an  Eastern,  everything  militates  against 
a  Western  foundation.  Only  this  can  account  for  the 
circumstances  connected  with  it  which  St.  Augustine 
found  when  he  arrived  in  the  country,  and  which  so 
astonished  him  ;  he  asked  Gregory  how,  when  the  faith 
was  the  same,  the  aistoms  of  Churches  could  be  dif- 
ferent ?  The  reason  which  perplexed  him  so  much 
is  plain,  but  only  on  the  hypothesis  that  the  British 
Church  was  of  Oriental  foundation ;  everything  about 
it  was  Oriental ;  the  very  word  Church  (Kf/jja/c^)  is 
derived  from  the  Greek,  and  was  never  applied  to  it 
in  the  Roman  language ;  the  British  Church  observed 
Oriental  customs  ;  the  form  of  the  tonsure  which  its 
clergy  wore  was  Oriental ;  the  method  it  followed 
for  computing  Easter^  was  the  Oriental,  whereas  that 
of  the  Roman  Church  was  the  Western  method  ;  and 
the  Liturgy  which  it  used  was  not  the  Roman,  but  the 
Galilean,  which  was  derived  from  St.  John. 

The  primitive  Liturgies,  it  may  be  observed  in  pass- 
ing, are  reducible  to  four  :  these  are,  i.  The  Oriental, 
which  was  in  use  from  the  Euphrates  to  the  Hellespont, 
and  thence  to  the  South  of  Greece;  2.  The  Alexandrian, 
in  Egypt,  Abyssinia,  and  the  borders  of  the  Medi- 
terranean to  the  West;  3.  The  Roman,  in  Italy,  Sicily, 

'  Socrates,  Eccl.  Hist.  v.  22,  p.  234,  considers  this  as  one  of  the  differ- 
ences between  the  East  and  West. 


ITS  FOUNDATION. 


19 


and  the  civil  diocese  of  Africa ;  4.  The  GalHcan,  in 
Gaul,  Spain,  and  (till  the  fourth  century)  in  the  Ex- 
archate of  Ephesus.  As  to  the  Galilean  Liturgy,  an 
author*  of  the  eighth  century  says,  "John  the  Evan- 
gelist first  chanted  the  Galilean  course  ;  then  after- 
wards the  blessed  Polycarp,  disciple  of  John ;  then 
afterwards,  thirdly,  Irenaeus,  who  was  Bishop  of  Lyons 
in  Gaul,  chanted  the  same  course  in  Gaul."  This  Li- 
turgy, which  was  distinct  from  the  Roman,  remained  in 
use  in  the  churches  of  Gaul  till  the  time  of  Charle- 
magne, who  introduced  the  Roman  Liturgy ;  it  was 
also,  as  we  have  seen,  the  Liturgy  in  use  in  the 
British  Church.  But  as  the  Liturgies  were  at  first 
not  written,  but  committed  to  memory,  and  each 
bishop  and  abbot  had  the  power  of  adapting  the  Li- 
turgy to  his  own  church,  there  arose  in  time  dif- 
ferent customs  or  "  uses,"  such  as  those  of  Sarum, 
York,  Hereford,  and  Bangor,  of  which  we  shall  hear 
more  hereafter " ;  we  may,  however,  mention  here, 
that  it  was  the  object  of  the  compilers  of  our  present 
Prayer-Book  to  make  out  of  these  one  uniform  book, 
and  that  the  Prayers  which  are  daily  used  in  our 
Church  are  actually  the  same  which  have  existed 
from  the  earliest  ages  ^ 

•  Spelman's  Concilia^  i.  176.  "  pp.  141  and  319. 

*  See  Palmer,  Orig.  Liturg. 


C  2 


CHAPTER  II. 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  TO  THE  MISSIONS  OF 
ST.  GERINIAN. 

TT  is  important  that  the  ApostoHc  foundation  of  the 
British  Church,  even  if  we  cannot  with  certainty 
name  its  founder,  should  be  estabhshed  ;  for  its  con- 
tinuity, and  the  succession  of  its  Bishops,  and  its  iden- 
tity with  our  Church  of  the  present  day,  admits  of  no 
reasonable  doubt.  We  have  the  clearest  evidence 
from  Tertullian of  its  wide  extension  at  the  end  of 
the  second  century.  It  can  lay  claim  to  its  martyrs, 
even  if  few  in  number,  in  the  Diocletian  persecution, 
A.D,  303.  Its  prosperous  condition  under  Constan- 
tine  is  described  by  Gildas  :  "  The  Christians  were 
brought  back  to  a  state  of  ease,  the  victorious  cross 
was  displayed,  the  churches  were  rebuilt,  and  the 
holy  solemnities  were  kept  without  any  disturb- 
ance." This  brings  us  to  the  age  of  the  Councils, 
at  three  of  which,  viz.  those  of  Aries,  Sardica,  and 
Rimini,  if  not  at  others,  we  have  positive  evidence 
that  British  Bishops  were  present.  In  the  time  of 
Jovian,  we  have  the  testimony  of  St.  Athanasius  as 
to  its  orthodoxy.  Shortly  after  this  occurred  the 
Pelagian  heresy,  and  the  missions  of  St.  German ; 
then  the  subjugation  of  the  country  by  the  Saxons, 
A.D.  449 — 597,  during  the  whole  of  which  time,  in 
whatever  obscurity,  in  consequence  of  that  persecu- 
tion, it  is  involved,  we  know  that  a  flourishing  Church 

'  In  the  passage  referred  to  (p.  8) :  "  Britannorum  inaccessa  Romanis 
loca,  Christo  vero  subdita." 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH,  ETC. 


existed  in  Wales  and  Cornwall,  that  the  Christians 
were  numerous,  that  they  maintained  there  their  own 
customs,  and  the  same  ritual  and  liturgy  which  they 
had  derived  from  St.  John,  through  SS.  Irenaeus  and 
Polycarp,  till  the  time  of  St.  Augustine.  But  to 
return. 

The  prominent  event  in  the  history  of  the  second 
century  is  the  story  connected  with  King  Lucius ;  if, 
indeed,  such  a  person  ever  existed.  Dean  Milman  ^ 
dismisses  it  as  a  "  legend."  Burton  also  denounces 
it  as  "  a  fable,  without  credit."  Gildas  takes  no  notice 
of  it.  But  that  there  was  such  a  person  there  is  some 
reason  for  believing  :  the  authority  of  Bede,  and  the 
agreement  of  many  authors  from  his  time,  render  it 
not  improbable ;  and  Nennius,  who  wrote  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  seventh  century,  is  positive  as  to  his  ex- 
istence But  there  is  no  reason  to  assign  any  great 
importance  to  the  story  connected  with  him.  That  he 
enjoyed  full  dominion  over  the  whole  country,  as  the 
monks  pretend,  or  that  he  was  anything  more  than 
a  petty  prince  over  part  of  Britain,  is  improbable. 
The  Romans  would  not  have  left  such  extensive 
power  in  the  hands  of  a  native  prince ;  a  native,  too, 
of  a  country  always  impatient  of  the  Roman  yoke, 
which  was  divided  from  the  other  parts  of  the  empire 
by  the  sea,  and  was  thus  rendered  frequently  inac- 
cessible. But  there  is  no  reason  why,  in  accordance 
with  their  custom  in  other  countries,  they  should  not 
have  placed  him,  as  they  did  Herod  and  his  sons  in 

*•  Lat.  Christ,  ii.  24.  Haddan  (Remains,  p.  227)  pronounces  him  "a 
mere  Roman  invention  of  the  fourth  or  fifth  century,  first  dressed  up  into 
shape  in  Wales,  in  the  eighth  or  ninth  century." 

Archb.  Usher  {(ie  Priinord.  c.  iii.  p.  39)  speaks  of  two  coins  bearing 
the  inscription  of  a  cross,  with  the  monogram,  LVC. 


22  THE  BRITISH  CHURCH 

Judaea,  in  authority  over  some  part  of  the  country''.  The 
true  version  of  the  story  may  have  been  as  follows  : — 
Lucius,  a  petty  king  in  Britain,  who  had  been  in- 
structed in  the  Christian  religion  by  the  British  Church, 
having  received  from  the  Romans  an  edict  to  put 
down  Druidism,  wished  to  enquire  more  fully  for 
himself  into  the  truth  of  the  two  religions.  From 
the  frequent  intercourse  kept  up  between  Rome  and 
Britain,  through  the  governors  and  soldiers  who  were 
constantly  passing  to  and  fro,  he  must  have  become 
acquainted  with  the  fame  of  the  Roman  Church ;  he 
must  have  heard  of  its  martyrs  ;  of  its  Bishop,  who, 
the  twelfth  in  direct  succession  from  the  Apostles,  was 
then  ruling  over  the  Roman  Church ;  there,  if  any- 
where, he  would  think  that  true  Christianity  was  to  be 
found,  and  he  would  be  desirous  of  learning,  before  he 
bound  himself  to  the  Christian  faith,  whether  the  two 
Churches  of  Rome  and  Britain  were  in  accord.  But 
no  idea  of  the  supremacy  of  one  Church  over  the 
other  could  possibly  have  occurred  to  him ;  for  it  is 
clear  that  at  that  time  no  such  supremacy  was  either 
allowed,  or  claimed.  So  he  sent  two  messengers, 
Elwan  and  Medwin,  to  Pope  Eleutherius,  to  Rome, 
to  gain  what  instruction  they  could.  Having  more 
fully  instructed  the  two  messengers  in  the  faith,  the 
Pope  baptized,  and  afterwards  ordained  them,  making 
Elwan  a  Bishop,  and  Medwin  a  teacher ;  and,  on  their 
return  to  England,  King  Lucius  and  the  chief  of  the 
people  were  baptized ;  a  revival  of  religion  occurred, 
and  the  number  of  Bishops  was  increased  ^  The  king 

In  fact,  the  Romans  were  proud  of  such  a  display  of  their  power : 
thus  Juvenal  speaks  of  King  Arviragus,  who  reigned  in  the  island  under 
Domitian. 

'  Pope  Eleutherius  is  said  to  have  sent  a  letter  to  King  Lucius,  which, 


TO  THE  MISSIONS  OF  ST.  GERMAN. 


23 


Is  said  to  have  settled  the  ecclesiastical  order ;  con- 
verted Druidical  temples  into  churches  \  and  endowed 
them  with  lands,  whilst  the  original  foundation  of 
several  churches  is  also  attributed  to  him  ^ ;  and  to 
have  been  a  great  patron  of  the  University  of 
Cambridge. 

From  the  death  of  King  Lucius,  "  the  history  for 
about  eighty  years  is  in  a  manner  sunk.  However, 
we  are  thus  far  certain,  both  from  ancient  and  modern, 
from  our  own  and  foreign  writers,  that  the  Christian 
religion  held  on  through  the  whole  period,  without 
the  least  interruption''."  Bede '  tells  us  that  from 
this  time  "  the  Britons  preserved  the  faith,  which  they 
had  received,  uncorrupted  and  entire,  in  peace  and 
tranquillity  until  the  time  of  the  emperor  Diocletian  ; 
Gildas  says  the  same^.  Origen''  speaks  of  Christianity 

however,  as  it  was  not  known  till  a  thousand  years  after  his  death,  Spel- 
man  regards  as  spurious.  Part  of  this  letter  is  said  to  have  been  as  fol- 
lows :  "  Leges  Romanas  et  Caesaris  semper  reprobare  possumus ;  legem 
Dei  nequaquam.  Habetis  penes  vos  in  regno  utramque  paginam ;  ex  illis 
Dei  gratia  per  concilium  regni  vestri  sume  legem,  et  per  illam,  Dei  pa- 
tientia,  vestrum  reges  Britanniae  regnum.  Vicarius  vero  Dei  estis  in 
regno." 

'  Particularly  that  dedicated  to  Diana,  in  London ;  and  another  near  it, 
to  Apollo,  in  the  same  city,  now  called  Westminster. — (Fuller,  B.  i.  c.  2  ; 
Collier.) 

n  Such  as  St.  Peter's,  Cornhill,  which  is  said  for  many  years  to  have 
been  the  seat  of  an  Archbishop ;  the  cathedral  at  Gloucester ;  a  church 
at  Winchester ;  a  church  and  college  at  Bangor  ;  the  restoration  of  St. 
Mary's,  Glastonbury ;  the  church  in  Dover  Castle ;  and  St.  Martin's, 
Canterbury. — (Fuller,  B.i.  c.  2.) 

*"  Collier,  cent.  iii.  '  Bede,  B.  i.  c.  4. 

3  "  Quae  praecepta  (in  Britannia)  licet  ab  incolis  lepid^  suscepta  sunt, 
apud  quosdam  tamen  integr^  et  alios  minos,  ad  persecutionem  Diocletiani 
novennem  permanere."— (Gild,  de  excid.  Brit.) 

"  Virtus  Domini  Salvatoris  et  cum  his  est,  qui  ab  orbe  nostro  in 
Britannia  dividuntur." 


24 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH 


existing  at  this  time  amongst  the  British,  as  also  do 
the  Magdeburg  Centuriators  \ 

But  the  time  had  now  arrived  when  the  Church  was 
to  acquire  new  strength  through  the  blood  of  its 
martyrs.  In  284,  Diocletian  was  proclaimed  em- 
peror, and  under  him  the  most  severe  persecution 
which  had  afflicted  the  Church,  and  the  only  one 
which  reached  Britain,  broke  out.  At  that  time  there 
were  no  less  than  four  emperors,  two  of  them,  Dio- 
cletian and  Maximian,  bearing  the  title  of  Augustus  ; 
whilst  Galerius,  son-in-law  of  Diocletian,  and  Con- 
stantius  Chlorus  bore  that  of  Caesar'".  During  the 
latter  part  of  the  century  Christianity  had  been  making 
rapid  progress and  its  professors  enjoying  ample 
toleration.  Christian  churches  began  to  assume  an 
appearance  of  architectural  splendour ;  persons  in 
high  station  allowed,  not  only  their  servants,  but 
their  wives  and  children,  to  profess  it ;  Christians 
were  appointed  to  the  government  of  provinces  ;  even 
the  emperor  Diocletian  himself  took  into  his  house- 
hold a  presbyter  of  the  Church  of  Corinth,  named 
Dorotheus  ° ;  whilst  his  wife  Prisca,  and  his  daughter 
Valeria,  the  wife  of  the  emperor  Galerius,  are  sup- 
posed to  have  been  Christians.  Of  the  four  em- 
perors, Diocletian  was  not  averse  to,  whilst  Con- 
stantius  Chlorus  was  inclined  to  favour,  Christianity. 
But  the  pagan  priests,  fearing  the  influence  that  his 
wife  and  daughter  might  exercise  over  him,  deter- 
mined to  work  upon  his  superstitious  character  by 
means  of  impositions  and  false  oracles,  a  scheme  in 
which  they  were  readily  joined  by  Galerius,  a  man 

'  "  Mansisse  et  hac  aetati  ejus  insulse  (i.e.  Britain)  ecclesias,  affirmare 
non  dubitamus."  "  Mosheim,  iv.  i.  i.  "  Eus.  H.  E.  viii.  i. 

»  Burt.  Eccl.  Hist.  p.  597. 


TO  THE  MISSIONS  OF  ST.  GERMAN. 


25 


of  savage  disposition,  whose  name,  rather  than  that 
of  his  father  -  in  -  law,  the  persecution  would  more 
rightly  have  taken.  At  length,  a.d.  303,  when  Dio- 
cletian was  absent  in  Nicomedia,  the  first  order  for 
the  persecution  of  the  Christians  went  forth  ;  the 
churches  were  to  be  demolished,  their  holy  books 
burnt,  and  they  themselves  deprived  of  all  civil 
rights.  But  still  Diocletian  was  averse  to  slaughter  ; 
no  Christians  were  to  suffer  death  except  those  who 
refused  to  give  up  their  books  to  the  magistrates  ^ 
But  soon,  at  the  instigation  of  his  son-in-law,  Dio- 
cletian issued  more  severe  proclamations  :  all  Chris- 
tians, lay,  as  well  as  the  clergy,  were  ordered,  under 
penalty  of  torture,  to  offer  sacrifice  to  the  pagan 
gods.  Soon  the  prisons  throughout  the  Roman  em- 
pire were  filled  with  Christians.  Whereas  the  other 
persecutions,  from  that  of  Nero,  had  been  of  short 
duration,  "  this  persecution,"  says  Bede,  "  was  carried 
on  incessantly  for  the  space  of  ten  years,  with  burn- 
ing of  churches,  outlawing  of  innocent  persons,  and 
the  slaughter  of  martyrs."  "  The  churches,"  says 
Gildas,  "  were  demolished  throughout  the  whole  em- 
pire ;  the  holy  Scriptures  searched  for,  and  burnt  in 
the  streets ;  the  priests  and  people  dragged  to  the 
shambles,  and  butchered  like  sheep,  insomuch  that 
in  some  provinces  there  were  scarcely  any  remains 
of  Christianity. 

In  Britain  the  persecution  only  lasted  two  years, 
and  was  less  severe  than  in  other  parts  of  the  empire. 
This  was  owing  to  the  governor  Constantius  Chlorus, 
father  of  the  great  Constantine,  who,  although  a  hea- 
then himself,  is  described  as  a  man  of  great  justice 
and  humanity.  But  it  was  not  in  his  power  to  dis- 
Those  who  did  so  were  called  Traditores. 


26 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH 


pense  with  the  edicts  issued  at  Rome ;  even  in  Britain, 
Gildas  informs  us  that  "many  Christians  were  de- 
spatched with  diversity  of  torture,  and  torn  Hmb  from 
limb  in  a  most  unheard-of  and  cruel  manner ;"  but 
as  the  names  of  only  three  have  been  preserved,  St. 
Alban  of  Verulam,  and  Aaron  and  Julius  of  Caer- 
leon-upon-Usk,  we  may  conclude  that  the  persecution 
in  Britain  was  not,  comparatively  speaking,  severe. 
The  name  of  St.  Alban,  as  being  the  proto-martyr 
of  Britain,  claims  especial  notice.  We  will  give  the 
story  in  the  language  of  the  historian  Bede,  leaving 
the  reader  to  divide  what  is  fact  from  what  is  fiction. 

Alban,  a  person  of  noble  birth,  and  an  officer  in 
the  Roman  army,  lived  at  Verulam,  near  the  town 
which  since  has  been  called  after  him,  St.  Alban's. 
During  the  persecution,  a  priest  named  Amphibalus  ^ 
took  refuge  in  his  house  from  the  pursuit  of  his  ene- 
mies. Alban,  who  was  then  a  pagan,  took  him  in, 
and  was  so  struck  with  his  piety,  that  he  himself 
received  instruction  from  him,  and  was  baptized. 
After  a  few  days  the  retreat  of  the  priest  was  dis- 
covered ;  Alban,  in  order  to  screen  him,  assuming 
his  cassock,  delivered  himself  up  to  the  soldiers, 
and  was  led  before  the  governor,  who  was  at  the 
time  engaged  in  sacrificing  to  the  Pagan  gods.  Con- 
fessing himself  a  Christian,  and  refusing  to  offer  the 
sacrifice,  after  having  suffered  most  cruel  tortures, 
which  he  bore  not  only  patiently  but  joyfully  for 
his  Lord's  sake,  he  was  led  forth  to  execution.  On 
arriving  at  the  little  river  Ver,  the  bridge  over  which 
was  so  crowded  with  people  that  it  was  impossible 

1  The  name  is  not  given  him  by  Bede  or  Gildas,  and  it  is  supposed 
by  Archbishop  Usher  to  denote  his  habit  (d/i<^i  ^dXX«)  rather  than 
his  person. 


TO  THE  MISSIONS  OF  ST,  GERMAN. 


27 


to  cross  it,  the  channel  of  the  river  was,  on  his  pray- 
ing, immediately  dried  up  for  him  to  pass  over.  See- 
ing this,  the  executioner  threw  down  his  sword,  pray- 
ing that  he  might  suffer  with  him,  or,  if  possible,  in- 
stead of  him.  Alban  then  ascended  a  hill  clothed 
with  all  sorts  of  flowers,  and  sloping  down  into  a 
most  beautiful  plain,  a  worthy  scene  for  a  martyr's 
sufferings ;  here,  on  the  summit,  on  his  prayer  to  God, 
a  living  spring  of  water  broke  out  before  his  feet,  as 
it  had  before  dried  up  in  the  valley ;  and  here  he  died 
the  martyr's  death,  and  received  the  crown  of  life.  But 
the  executioner  who  did  the  deed  was  not  permitted 
to  rejoice  over  it,  for  his  eyes  dropped  upon  the  ground, 
together  with  the  blessed  martyr's  head At  the 
same  time  suffered  also  the  soldier  who  had  refused  to 
be  his  executioner,  and  not  long  after  suffered  also  the 
priest  Amphibalus  ^  The  scene  of  the  execution  of 
St.  Alban  was  called  Holmhurst;  over  his  remains 
a  stately  church  was  built ;  this  church  having  been 
destroyed  by  the  Saxons,  Ofifa,  king  of  Mercia,  a.d.  793, 
built  on  the  spot  one  of  the  noblest  monuments  in 
England,  the  Abbfey  of  St.  Alban's,  lately  converted 
into  a  Bishop's  see. 

In  305,  Diocletian  and  Maximian  resigning,  the 
West  was  left  entirely  to  Constantius  Chlorus,  under 
whom,  although  he  never  became  a  Christian,  the  per- 
secution of  the  Christians  ceased.  In  the  following 
year  he  died  at  York,  and  there  his  son  Constantine, 
who  was  born  in  Britain '  by  Helena,  a  British  lady, 
was  proclaimed  emperor  by  the  soldiery  in  Britain. 

'  Bede,  B.  i.  7. 

"  His  martyrdom  is  not  mentioned  in  the  early  martyrologies,  but  Mat- 
thew Paris  and  several  historians  vouched  to  having  read  it  in  a  book  in 
St.  Alban's  monastery. 

'  Baronius  says  that  any  one  must  be  extremely  mad  ("  extremae  de- 
mentiae  ")  to  deny  this. 


28 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH 


In  312  he  marched  against,  and  defeated  Maxen- 
tius,  who  had  usurped  the  throne  of  Italy  and  Africa. 
It  was  on  his  way  to  this  victory,  somewhere  in  Gaul, 
although  doubts  exist  as  to  the  exact  place,  that  we 
are  told  he  beheld  in  the  heavens  a  luminary  cross 
outshining  the  midday  sun,  intersected  by  the  letter 
P,  with  the  inscription,  "  By  this  conquer ;"  which  sa- 
cred symbol  he  henceforward  affixed  to  the  Labarum, 
or  standard  of  his  army.  Constantine  and  Licinius  were 
now  sole  emperors,  and  in  a.d.  313  they  drew  up  an 
edict  at  Milan,  giving  full  liberty  to  Christians,  and 
all  sects,  to  live  according  to  their  own  laws  and  in- 
stitutions :  but  it  was  not  till  a.d.  324,  that,  having 
defeated  in  battle,  and  treacherously  put  Licinius  to 
death,  Constantine  became  sole  emperor ;  at  that  time 
he  became  a  Christian,  and  Christianity  the  religion 
of  the  Roman  empire. 

It  was  a  great  victory  to  the  Church,  having  a  Chris- 
tian emperor,  but  it  was  not  without  great  difficulty 
that  Constantine  was  brought  to  acknowledge  the  Chris- 
tian faith  :  that  he  should  not  have  embraced  it  earlier, 
after  the  vision  which  he  saw  irt  a.d.  312,  appears 
strange  After  that  vision  he  was  favourably  inclined 
to  Christianity,  but  his  views  with  regard  to  the  Sa- 
viour were  very  indistinct ;  he  was  still  addicted  to 
many  pagan  superstitions,  and  by  no  means  regarded 
Christianity  as  the  only  true  religion.  Much  as  we 
may  admire  the  virtues  of  Constantine,  and  however 
thankful  we  may  be  for  his  favour  to  Christianity,  we 
must  not  be  blind  to  his  faults,  which  were  neither 
few  nor  slight.  He  was  notoriously  addicted,  not 
only  to  pride  and  voluptuousness,  but  also  to  treachery 

"  The  causes  of  his  conversion  have  been  disputed.  Theodoret  as- 
cribes it  to  his  mother  Helena ;  Eusebius,  on  the  contrary,  ascribes  the 
conversion  of  the  mother  to  the  son. 


TO  THE   MISSIONS  OF  ST.  GERMAN. 


29 


and  cruelty.  He  put  to  death  his  own  son  Cnspus, 
and  his  wife  Fausta,  on  an  unfounded  suspicion,  and 
he  killed  Licinius,  who  had  married  his  own  sister, 
and  his  unoffending  son,  contrary  to  his  pledged  word. 
His  favour  towards  the  Christians  arose  as  much  from 
a  statesmanlike  as  from  a  religious  point  of  view. 
He  saw  what  rapid  strides  Christianity  was  making, 
in  spite  of  persecution  ;  he  understood  what  power- 
ful allies  they  might  be  to  him  ;  he  felt  it  was  his  in- 
terest as  well  as  his  duty  to  support  them.  He  did 
not  declare  his  change  till  after  the  death  of  Licinius. 
Suffering  under  remorse  for  his  sins,  he  sought  in  vain 
comfort  and  absolution  from  the  pagan  priests ;  it  was 
from  Hosius  ^,  Bishop  of  Corduba,  who  happened  to 
be  at  his  court  at  the  time,  that  he  learnt  that  the 
Blood  of  Christ  only  could  atone  for  the  sins  of  pen- 
itent believers.  Havino-  once  been  convinced  of  this 
truth,  there  is  no  doubt  he  was  sincere ;  and  if  for 
^  many  years  of  his  life  he  remained  a  catechumen, 
and  did  not  receive  baptism  till  a  few  days  before 
his  death,  yet  this  delay  was  agreeable  to  the  practice 
of  the  times,  arising  from  an  exalted  notion  of  Bap- 
tism, and  a  fear  that  througrh  falling-  into  sin  after- 
wards,  its  grace  might  be  lost.  After  his  baptism  he 
refused  to  wear  any  other  dress  than  his  baptismal 
garment ;  and  he  died  on  Whit-sunday  a.d.  337. 

The  accession  of  Constantine  to  the  imperial  throne 
marks  an  important  era  in  the  history  of  the  British 
Church  ;  of  its  communion  in  faith  and  discipline  with 
other  Christian  Churches,  we  have  abundant  proofs  in 
the  ecclesiastical  documents  of  the  age^.  We  have 
now  arrived  at  the  age  of  the  Councils. 

'  Hosius  was  one  of  the  three  President  Bishops  at  the  Council 
of  Nice.  7  Lingard,  i.  6. 


30 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH 


In  the  year  314,  Constantine  summoned  a  Council 
at  Aries,  to  consider  the  question  of  the  Donatist 
schism,  which  had  arisen  in  Africa,  and  which,  though 
small  at  its  commencement,  continued  to  trouble  the 
Church  for  more  than  a  century.  At  this  time,  there 
were  three  provinces  in  Britain,  called  respectively, 
Maxima  Csesariensis,  the  metropolitan  seat  being  at 
York ;  Britannia  Prima,  with  the  metropolitan  at 
London ;  and  Britannia  Secunda,  with  the  metro- 
politan at  Caerleon-on-Usk.  We  consequently  find 
that  the  Canons  of  that  Council  were  subscribed  by 
three  British  Bishops,  Restitutus  of  London,  Eborius 
of  York,  and  Adelfius  "  de  civitate  colonia  Londinen- 
sium."  As  to  the  meaning  of  the  last  expression  there 
is  much  doubt ;  Bishop  Stillingfleet  thinks  it  a  mis- 
print^; it  probably  referred  to  the  third  province  of 
Caerleon-on-Usk.  There  were  also  present  from 
Britain,  Sacerdos  a  presbyter,  and  Arminius  a  dea- 
con. The  number  attending  from  Britain,  to  judge  , 
from  the  subscription  to  the  Council,  seems  propor- 
tionate to  the  representatives  of  other  countries,  ex- 
cept the  neighbourhood  of  Aries,  which  sent  more 
Bishops,  so  as  to  supply  any  deficiency  from  the 
more  distant  dioceses.  One  important  point  must 
not  be  unnoticed,  as  shewing  the  position  at  that 
time  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  Sylvester,  the  Bishop 
of  Rome,  was  not  present ;  yet  we  find  that  the  Bi- 
shops did  not  acknowledge  his  supremacy,  nor  re- 
quire his  confirmation  to  the  Canons  They  merely 
sent  him  a  copy  of  their  decrees ;  they  address  him 
as  "frater  dilectissime  ;"  they  tell  him  that  they  had 

^  Stilling.,  Orig.  Brit.  i.  115. 
"  QujE  decrevimus  communi  concilio  caritati  tuce  significamus,  ut 
omnes  sciant  quid  in  futurum  observari  dcbeat." 


TO  THE  AIISSIONS  OF  ST.  GERMAN. 


31 


assembled,  "  piissimi  imperatoris  voluntate,"  that  they 
had  "Dei  nostri  praesens  auctoritas  et  traditio;"  but 
if  he  had  possessed  any  patriarchal  rights  over  the 
Western  Churches,  could  they  assume  the  power  of 
making  Canons,  and  only  send  them  to  the  Pope  to 
publish?  would  Hildebrand,  or  Innocent  III.,  or  a 
Pope  at  the  present  day  permit  this  ? 

Eleven  years  afterwards,  a.d.  325,  the  first  Qicu- 
menical  Council,  the  Council  of  Nice,  summoned  by 
Constantine  to  decide  on  the  heresy  of  Arius,  a  Pres- 
byter of  Alexandria,  was  attended  by  318  Bishops, 
presided  over  by  Alexander,  Bishop  of  Alexandria, 
Eustathius,  Bishop  of  Antioch,  and  Hosius,  Bishop  of 
Corduba.  At  this  Council  there  is  no  express  state- 
ment that  British  Bishops  were  present,  but  the  sub- 
scriptions to  it  are  confused  and  imperfect.  There 
can,  however,  be  little  doubt  that  some  were  present. 
Eusebius  says  that  Constantine  summoned  Bishops 
out  of  all  provinces  ^  and  provided  them  with  car- 
riages, and  other  accommodation  for  their  journey  ; 
and  that  the  most  eminent  Bishops  of  all  Churches, 
as  well  those  of  Europe  as  of  Asia,  did  come  to  Nice. 
Now  Eusebius,  as  we  have  seen  before,  was  well  ac- 
quainted with  the  Churches  of  Britain,  and  it  is  not 
likely  that  Constantine,  who  had  summoned  British 
Bishops  to  so  unimportant  a  Council  as  that  of  Aries, 
would  neglect  to  summon  them  to  the  far  more  im- 
portant one  of  Nice.  The  result  of  the  Council  was 
that  Arius  was  condemned;  the  Nicene  Creed,  as 
far  as  the  sentence,  "  I  believe  in  the  Holy  Ghost," 
was  drawn  up ;  the  proper  time  for  keeping  Easter 
settled  ;  and  twenty  Canons  passed,  the  emperor  at- 
tending the  last  sittings,  and  confirming  the  Canons. 

aTTavTax"6(v  rois  e7ricr/c(!7rour  ypafifxaai  TifxrjTiKols. 


32 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH 


The  Council  of  Sardica,  a.u.  347,  was  summoned  by 
the  emperor  Constantius,  son  of  Constantine,  to  re- 
unite the  Eastern  and  Western  Churches,  which  had 
been  disturbed  through  the  Arian  party  having  ban- 
ished Athanasius  and  the  orthodox  Bishops  from 
their  sees.  That  British  Bishops,  either  in  person  or 
by  proxy,  were  present,  and  that  they  sided  with  the 
orthodox  party,  we  have  the  evidence  of  St.  Atha- 
nasius himself  ;  he  also  speaks  of  a  British  Bishop, 
named  Restitutus,  attending,  but  the  commonness  of 
the  name  makes  it  doubtful  whether  he  was  or  not 
the  Bishop  of  London. 

Hilary  of  Poitiers,  a.d.  358*^,  congratulated  the 
British  Bishops  on  "  their  freedom  from  all  con- 
tagion of  the  detestable  heresy"  of  Arianism  ;  and 
in  A.D.  360,  three  British  Bishops  were  present  at 
the  Council  of  Rimini.  Of  this  we  have  the  autho- 
rity of  Sulpicius  Severus  ;  for  he  relates  an  anecdote 
concerning  them.  When  the  emperor  Constantius 
offered  to  provide  board  and  lodging  to  all  the  Bi- 
shops at  the  public  expense,  the  other  Bishops,  and 
amongst  them  the  British  Bishops,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  three,  declined  ^ ;  from  which  we  may  infer 
two  things  :  firstly,  that  there  were  several  British 
Bishops  at  the  Council ;  secondly,  the  prosperous 
condition  of  the  British  Church,  where  Bishops  could 

"  Usher,  Br/f.  Eccl.  Ant.,  p.  105. 

^  Hilary,  whilst  an  exile  in  Phrygia,  writes  thus:  "  Dilectissimis  et 
beatissimis  fratribus  et  coepiscopis  .  .  .  .  et  provinciarum  Britanniarum 
episcopis,  Hilarius  servus  Christi  in  Deo  et  Domino  nostro  aeternam 
salutem.  Gratulatus  sum  in  Domino  incontaminatos  vos  et  illaesos  ab 
omni  contagio  detestandse  hasreseos  perstitisse." 

'  "Id  nostris  (Aquitanis)  Gallis  ac  Bretannis  indecens  visum  est;  repu- 
diatis  fiscalibus  propriis  sumptibus  vivere  maluerunt ;  tres  tantum  ex 
Britannia,  inopia  proprii,  publico  usi  sunt." 


TO  THE  MISSIONS  OF  ST.  GERMAN. 


33 


travel  so  far  from  their  country,  and  live,  with  the 
exception  of  three,  in  a  foreign  land  at  their  own 
expense.  But,  whatever  may  have  been  the  conse- 
quences of  the  Council  of  Rimini,  although,  no  doubt, 
its  members  were  cajoled  into  accepting  the  uncatholic 
formulary  which  made  the  name  of  Rimini  a  byword, 
they  returned  to  the  Nicene  position;  for  in  a.d.  363, 
we  find  St.  Athanasius  \  although  he  detected  in  other 
places  a  widespread  tendency  to  Arianism,  reckoning 
the  Britons  amongst  those  who  were  loyal  to  the 
Catholic  faith ;  it  .is  evident,  therefore,  that  Gildas 
and  Bede  greatly  exaggerated  the  influence  of  Arian- 
ism in  Britain.  Eminent  authorities  in  the  age  follow- 
ing that  of  St.  Athanasius  speak  of  their  orthodoxy  : 
St.  Chrysostom  says  that  in  "  the  British  isles  ....  as 
in  the  farthest  East,  or  beside  the  Euxine,  or  in  the 
South,  men  may  be  heard  discussing  points  of  Scrip- 
ture with  differing  voices,  but  not  differing  belief;" 
and  St.  Jerome,  writing  about  a.d.  390,  says  that 
Britain  "worships  the  same  Christ,  observes  the  same 
rule  of  faith  as  other  nations^."  It  is  evident,  there- 
fore, that  the  British  Church  remained  sound  in  doc- 
trine ;  or,  at  the  most,  only  slightly  tainted  with 
Arianism,  to  the  end  of  the  fourth  century. 

But  in  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  century,  both 
Gildas  and  Bede  agree  in  charging  it  with  Pela- 
gianism,  or  the  denial  of  original  sin,  and  the  neces- 
sity of  divine  grace ;  a  heresy  which  was  first  taught 
by  a  native  of  Wales ^  named  Morgan,  or  "sea-born," 

^  TavTTjv  8e  irlcmv  oi  iv  tiiKala  avueXdovrts  (afxoKoyqa-av  Trdrcpes,  Kai 
Tavrrj  (ivfiy\fri<j>oi  Tvyxd-vovdi  nacrai  ai  navTaxov  Kara  tottov  eKKXrja-iai  ai  re 
Kara  rrjv  T.navlav  /cat  BpeTavvlav  Kai  TaXXiay. — (Athan.  ad  Jovian.  J7np.) 

»  Bright's  Early  English  Church,  p.  12. 

Such  was  the  general  opinion  :  Stillingfleet,  however,  thinks  he  was 
"Scotus,"  i.e.  a  native  Irishman. 

D 


34 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH 


in  consequence  of  which  the  Roman  name  Pelagius 
was  given  him,  and  he  was  commonly  known,  St. 
Augustine  tells  us,  as  Pelagius  Brito'.  Pelagius, 
who  had  left  his  native  country  early  in  life,  never 
appears  to  have  returned  to  it,  and  never  attempted 
personally  to  propagate  his  heretical  opinions  in  Bri- 
tain :  his  heresy  however — which  was  refuted  by  St. 
Augustine,  Bishop  of  Hippo,  and  was  condemned 
in  councils  held  at  Carthage  and  Milevum,  a.d.  416, 
(no  less  than  thirty  councils  were  held  against 
it,) — is  supposed  to  have  been  introduced  here  by 
Agricola,  the  son  of  Severianus,  a  Gallic  Bishop 
The  British  Bishops,  who  were  generally  orthodox 
were  alarmed  at  the  success  which  Pelagianism  had 
met  with,  and  so,  according  to  Bede,  they  sent  for 
help  to  the  Bishops  of  the  neighbouring  Church  of 
Gaul,  who,  as  far  as  we  can  learn,  without  consult- 
ing the  Pope summoned  a  council  at  Troyes,  and 
sent  over,  probably  a.d.  429,  St.  German,  Bishop 
of  Auxerre,  and  Lupus,  Bishop  of  Troyes,  brother 
of  St.  Vincentius,  two  Bishops  of  great  reputation, 

'  "  Ut  ab  illo  distingueretur  qui  Pelagius  Tarenti  dicitur." 
Haddan,  on  the  other  hand,  says  (Remains,  336,  note) :  "Pelagianism 
found  no  doubt  a  heresiarch  and  a  name  in  a  British  monk,  and  that  here- 
siarch  a  coadjutor  (probably)  in  an  Irishman.  But  neither  Pelagius  nor 
Cselestius  originated  the  heresy.  It  was  imparted  to  Pelagius  by  Rufinus, 
a  Syrian  ;  and  not  in  Britain,  but  in  Rome." 

'  Although  Fastidius,  Bishop  as  is  supposed  of  London,  the  only  Bishop 
of  the  ancient  Britons  of  whom  any  doctrinal  work  is  extant,  is  charged, 
through  an  overstrained  interpretation  of  his  treatise,  with  Pelagianism. 
Stillingfleet,  however,  defends  him. 

"  Prosper  of  Aquitaine,  however,  asserts  that  Pope  Caslestine  sent  St. 
German  ;  and  it  must  be  admitted  that  his  opinion  is  of  weight,  as  he  was 
on  a  mission  to  that  Pope,  a.d.  431,  and  was  afterwards  secretary  to  Leo 
the  Great.  But  he  evidently  greatly  exaggerates  the  Pope's  authority ;  for 
even  if,  as  he  says,  Caelestine  did  send  St.  German  as  his  representative 
(vice  sua),  the  Britons  did  not  accept  him  as  the  Pope's  Vicar,  and  regarded 
It  only  as  a  friendly  act,  and  not  as  of  one  having  authority  over  them. 


TO  THE  MISSIONS  OF  ST.  GERMAN. 


35 


for  that  purpose.  The  two  Bishops,  preaching  in  the 
fields  and  streets,  soon  brought  conviction  home  to 
their  hearers ;  in  a  solemn  conference  at  Verulam, 
the  triumph  of  orthodoxy  was  complete,  and  the 
two  Bishops  returned  to  the  Continent,  leaving  the 
Britons,  as  they  supposed,  well  settled  in  the  faith, 
and  the  Pelagfians  convinced  of  their  errors 

But  the  Pelagian  heresy  reviving,  a.d.  447,  St. 
German  returned  to  Britain,  taking  with  him  this 
time  Severus,  Bishop  of  Treves,  a  disciple  of  his 
former  colleague,  Lupus ;  his  labours  were  again  suc- 
cessful, but  now  the  heretical  teachers  were  banished, 
and  from  that  time  forward  Bede  tells  us  that  the 
British  Churches  remaind  sound  and  orthodox. 

We  must  return  for  a  moment  to  the  first  mission 
of  SS.  German  and  Lupus  :  it  was  during  the  time 
that  the  Picts  and  Scots  had  combined  to  invade  the 
country.    About  the  middle  of  Lent,  a.d.  430,  the 
two  missionaries  joined  the  British  camp,  in  which 
a  great  number  of  the  soldiers  were  still  heathens, 
and  having  spent  the  intermediate  time  in  instruct- 
ing them,  administered  to  them  on  Easter  Eve  the 
sacrament  of  Baptism,  in  a  church  formed  out  of 
the  boughs  of  trees.    The  British  army  advanced, 
the  greater  part  of  them  still  wet  from  the  baptis- 
:     mal  laver,  putting  their  trust  in  divine  help,  whilst 
human  power  was  despaired  of    From  these  inex- 
;    perienced  troops,  St.  German,  determined  himself  to 
i    be  their  leader,  selected  the  most  active,  and  posted 
j    his  little  army  in  ambush  in  a  narrow  valley  encom- 

"  Before  leaving,  St.  German  visited  the  tomb  of  St.  Alban,  and  depo- 
sited there  some  relics  of  the  Apostles  and  Martyrs  ;  whilst  at  the  same 
time  he  took  away  with  him  some  earth  from  the  martyr's  grave  (still  red 
it  was  said  with  his  blood),  to  place  in  a  new  church  which  he  dedicated 
to  the  saint  at  Auxerre. 

D  2 


36 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH. 


passed  by  hills,  since  called  Maes  Gannon,  or  the 
field  of  German.  The  heathen  army  drew  near,  con- 
fident of  victory ;  all  of  a  sudden  the  priests  from 
the  ambush  shouted  "  Alleluia,  Alleluia,  Alleluia," 
words  with  which  the  soldiers  had  become  familiar 
during  their  late  Easter  rejoicings ;  with  one  voice 
they  took  up  the  shout ;  the  surrounding  hills  mul- 
tiplied the  echo,  it  rang  from  hill  to  hill,  and  filled 
the  invading  hosts  with  panic ;  thinking  the  hills 
were  falling  on  them,  they  cast  away  their  arms,  and 
fled  in  precipitate  disorder,  many  of  them  being 
drowned  in  their  flight ;  thus  the  grand  "  Alleluia 
victory "  was  gained,  the  Britons  remaining  inactive 
spectators  of  the  victory,  without  losing  a  single  man. 


CHAPTER  III. 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 

TN  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century  commenced  a 
very  dark  period  in  the  history  of  our  Church  and 
country.  With  the  exception  of  a  few  incursions  from 
the  barbarous  Caledonians  in  the  north,  the  Romans 
had  governed  Britain  in  peace  and  security  for  three 
hundred  and  fifty  years ;  and  the  loss  of  liberty  was 
more  than  counterbalanced  by  the  improvements 
which  the  Romans  had  introduced  into  the  rude 
and  savage  manners  of  the  conquered.  Under 
Roman  rule  Christianity  flourished ;  arts,  agriculture, 
and  commerce  increased ;  roads  were  made,  mines 
opened,  many  considerable  towns  arose ;  and  at  the 
present  day  many  Roman  remains  testify  how  much 
England  owes  to  Roman  civilization.  But  there 
was  one  drawback.  The  Britons  had  so  long  been 
under  the  Roman  rule,  and  been  so  long  accustomed 
to  rely  on  Roman  aid,  that  they  had  grown  effeminate 
and  unwarlike ;  and  besides  this,  their  best  men  were 
constantly  being  drafted  away  to  protect  the  interests 
of  the  Roman  empire  in  other  parts  of  the  world,  so 
that  they  had  not  the  means,  that  they  would  other- 
wise have  had,  of  defending  themselves. 

And  now  the  days  when  they  could  rely  upon  Ro- 
man aid  were  fast  drawing  to  a  close  :  the  northern  bar- 
barians were  threatening  Rome  itself ;  the  great  fabric 
of  the  empire  was  tottering  to  its  base ;  so  Rome, 
obliged  to  concentrate  around  the  capital  the  scat- 
tered forces  of  the  empire,  withdrew  its  legions  from 
Britain. 

But  at  this  very  time  danger  threatened  Britain 


38 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


also.  The  tribes  from  the  north,  the  Picts  (as  the 
Caledonians  were  then  called),  and  the  Scots  (a  tribe 
who  had  migrated  from  Ireland),  made  frequent  in- 
cursions into  the  country.  In  their  distress  the  people 
appealed  again  and  again  to  Rome  for  help ;  one  of 
these  appeals,  addressed  to  "  yElius  thrice  consul,"  was 
inscribed  as  the  Groans  of  the  British;  the  Romans, 
out  of  pity  for  their  wretched  state,  did  all  they  could 
for  them ;  they  sent  over  such  forces  as  they  could 
ill  spare  under  their  own  difficulties,  first  one  legion 
and  then  another  ;  they  then  told  them  plainly  that  they 
could  help  them  no  longer,  and  that  they  must  train 
up  their  people  to  the  defence  of  their  wives  and  chil- 
dren, against  those  who  were  no  stronger  than  them- 
selves. To  encourage  them  the  more,  they  built  for 
them  a  stone  wall  extending  from  sea  to  sea,  and  exer- 
cised them  in  the  use  of  arms  ;  and  then,  a.d.  409,  they 
took  their  last  farewell  of  Britain,  never  to  return. 

But  it  was  to  their  vices,  rather  than  their  cowardice, 
that  the  calamities  which  came  upon  the  nation  are  to 
be  ascribed.  Bede  speaks  of  the  depth  of  wickedness 
into  which  priests  as  well  as  people  had  fallen.  Gil- 
das  draws  a  sad  picture  of  the  prevalent  immorality  : 
"  Those  who  should  have  set  the  best  examples,  their 
priests  and  teachers,  were  as  bad  as  the  others;  exces- 
sive drinking,  heats  and  animosities,  contentions  and 
divisions,  envy  and  oppression,  were  then  so  prevail- 
ing, that  they  seem  to  have  lost  all  judgment  of 
good  and  evil." 

The  departure  of  the  Romans  only  stimulated  the 
enemies  of  Britain  to  renew  their  attacks.  The  Britons 
persuaded  their  king,  Vortigern,  a.d.  449,  to  adopt  the 
fatal  policy  of  calling  in  the  assistance  of  the  Germans, 
who  were  noted  pirates,  and  who  had  for  some  time 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


39 


been  coasting-  around  their  shores.  This,  Bede  says, 
was  a  punishment  sent  by  God  for  the  wickedness  of 
the  people ;  and  Gildas  speaks  of  "  the  stupidity  and 
infatuation  which  the  Britons  were  then  under,  to  call 
in  a  nation  to  help  them,  whom  they  dreaded  worse 
than  death."  These  Germans,  called  by  the  Romans, 
Saxons,  but  known  amongst  themselves  under  the 
common  name  of  Angles,  or  English,  were  not  un- 
acquainted with  Britain  ;  they  knew  well  its  great 
fertility,  the  wealth  of  its  cities,  the  accessibility  of 
its  coasts,  and  the  weakness  of  its  people.  Nor  were 
the  Britons  ignorant  of  the  Germans.  Not  unfre- 
quently  they  had  joined  their  northern  enemies  in  their 
incursions ;  their  ravages  had  been  so  frequent  and  so 
successful,  that  the  whole  shore  from  the  Elbe  to  the 
British  channel  was  known  as  "the  Saxon  shore 
and  under  the  title  of  "Counts  of  the  Saxon  shore," 
Roman  officers  were  appointed  to  guard  the  Roman 
possessions. 

Scarcely  had  these  Germans  vanquished  the  foes 
against  whom  they  had  been  called  in,  than  they 
shewed  themselves  in  their  true  light.  They  found 
Britain  was  a  pleasant  land  ;  other  adventurers  came, 
and  brought  over  their  wives  and  families,  and  drove 
out  the  Britons,  whom  they  called  Welsh,  or  strangers. 
The  first  that  came  had  been  Jutes,  who  set  up  the 
first  kingdom  of  Kent,  a.d.  451.  Next  came  the 
Saxons,  who  set  up  the  kingdom  of  Sussex  in  477, 
and  Wessex  in  519,  and  Essex,  which  included  Mid- 
dlesex, in  530.  Later  came  the  Angles  in  547,  who 
set  up  the  kingdoms  of  East  Anglia  and  Northumbria. 
Others  went  inland,  and  founded  Mercia,  a.d.  585. 

For  some  time  Britain,  unaided  and  alone,  success- 
*  Kemble,  Saxons  in  England,  i.  14. 


40 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


fully  withstood  its  invaders.  On  one  occasion,  indeed," 
under  Ambrosius  Aurelianus,  a.d.  489,  they  seem  to 
have  won  an  important  battle  at  Bannesdown.  Am- 
brosius employed  the  respite  thus  afforded  in  rebuild- 
ing the  churches  which  had  been  destroyed  in  the  war, 
and  in  providing  for  the  better  settlement  of  religious 
affairs.  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  says  that  Ambrosius 
convened  a  Council,  and  appointed  two  metropolitans, 
Sampson  to  York,  and  Dubricius  to  Caerleon ;  Samp- 
son, we  are  told,  afterwards  went  to  Armorica,  and 
became  Archbishop  of  Dole  ^. 

But  eventually  victory  remained  with  its  enemies ; 
and  never  was  there  a  victory  more  complete,  or  more 
cruelly  misused.  For,  of  all  the  hordes  that  dismem- 
bered the  Roman  empire,  the  Saxons  were  the  most 
barbarous.  The  Goths  and  Lombards  had  been 
Christianized  ;  and  the  Franks,  if  not  Christians,  had 
at  least  been  softened  by  Roman  civilization.  But  the 
Saxons  were  heathen ;  they  worshipped  the  sun  and 
moon,  and  Wodin  or  Odin,  and  Thor  the  thunderer, 
and  many  other  false  gods  ^  The  greatest  virtue  with 
them  was  courage,  the  greatest  vice,  cowardice  :  those 
who  fell  in  battle  were  the  special  favourites  of  the 
gods,  and  were  at  once  admitted  to  the  hall  of  Woden 
(Walhalla),  where  their  time  was  passed  in  alternate 
fighting  and  feasting ;  whilst  for  cowards  were  re- 
served all  the  pains  of  Niflheim  ("evil  home"):  to 
drink  ale  for  ever  out  of  the  skulls  of  their  enemies, 
was  the  reward  of  the  virtuous ;  hunger  and  thirst  the 
punishment  of  the  vicious. 

We  can  easily  understand,  from  the  fierce  character 
of  the  people,  how  the  Teutonic  settlement  in  Britain 

Collier,  cent.  vi.  It  is,  however,  from  them  that  we  derive 

the  word  "  God,"  or,  "  the  Good." 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


41 


was  unlike  that  of  the  Goths,  or  Lombards,  or  Franks 
in  the  countries  which  they  conquered.  The  conquest 
of  Gaul,  or  Italy,  was  little  more  than  a  forcible  settle- 
ment in  the  conquered  country,  which  was  destined  in 
the  course  of  time  to  absorb  the  conquerors.  French, 
for  instance,  is  not  the  language  of  the  Frank,  but  of 
the  Gaul,  whom  the  Frank  conquered.  But  the 
German  conquest  of  Britain  was  a  sheer  dispossession 
and  slaughter  of  the  conquered  people.  Wherever 
the  conqueror  went,  the  vengeance  he  took  on  the 
Britons  was  terrible  ;  whole  villages  and  towns  were 
consigned  to  the  flames,  and  a  promiscuous  slaughter 
of  the  inhabitants  ensued ;  everything  Celtic  was  as 
effectually  wiped  out  of  the  land,  as  everything  Roman 
was  wiped  out  of  Africa  by  the  Saracen  conquerors  of 
Carthage  Britain  ceased  to  be  Britain,  and  became 
England  :  the  religion,  the  laws,  the  language  were 
all  changed ;  and,  as  if  to  recall  to  the  people  the 
daily  remembrance  of  their  slavery,  the  very  days  of 
the  week  took  the  names  of  the  deities  which  had  de- 
throned Christ  ^ 

Meanwhile,  what  was  the  condition  of  the  British 
Church  ?  According  to  Bingham  \  there  must  have 
been  in  the  country,  before  these  calamities  came  upon 
it,  more  Bishops  than  there  are  at  the  present  day. 
By  the  Anglo-Saxon  conqueror,  England,  that  is,  the 
conquered  portion  of  the  country,  was  divided  into 
seven  kingdoms,  known  as  the  Saxon  Heptarchy:  those 
kingdoms  were  Kent,  Sussex,  Essex,  Wessex,  East 
Anglia,  Mercia,  and  Northumbria;  and  in  them  Chris- 
tianity was  simply  annihilated.  Its  wretched  condition 
we  learn  from  Gildas,  who,  writing  about  the  middle  of 

Freeman's  Norman  Conquest.  '  Green's  History  of  the 

English  People.  '  Antiquities  of  the  Christian  Church,  B.  ix.  ch.  6. 


42 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


the  sixth  century,  must  either  himself  have  been  an 
eye-witness,  or  have  conversed  with  those  who  had 
been  the  eye-witnesses  of  the  devastation  which  he  de- 
scribes. All  the  cities  and  churches  were  burnt  to 
the  ground  ;  the  inhabitants  destroyed  by  the  sword, 
or  buried  in  the  ruins  of  houses  and  altars,  which  were 
defiled  with  the  blood  of  the  slain.  He  applies  to  the 
devastation  the  words  of  the  Psalmist,  "  They  have 
cast  fire  into  Thy  sanctuary,  by  casting  down  Thy 
dwelling-place  to  the  ground;"  and,  "O  God,  the 
heathen  have  come  into  Thine  inheritance  :  Thy  holy 
temple  have  they  defiled."  All  public  and  private 
buildings,  says  Bede,  were  destroyed  ;  the  priests' 
blood  was  spilt  upon  the  altars ;  the  prelates  and 
people  destroyed  together  by  fire  and  sword,  and  no 
man  dare  give  them  burial. 

But  the  whole  of  the  western  part  of  the  country 
remained  unconquered.  Strathclyde,  including  the 
country  from  the  Clyde  to  the  Dee,  the  kingdom  of 
Cumbria;  North  Wales,  or  Cambria  ;  South  Wales  ^, 
or  Devon  and  Cornwall  ^  with  part  of  Somerset  and 
the  sacred  Avalon,  remained  purely  British ;  this  land 
the  English  called  Welsh-land,  or,  the  "  Land  of  the 
Foreigner,"  Welsh  being  the  name  which  the  Ger- 
mans applied  to  all  nations  speaking  languages  of 
Latin  descent.  For  a  time,  Theon,  Bishop  of  London, 
and  Thadioc  of  York,  held  to  their  sees  in  England; 
but  when  the  country  had  entirely  relapsed  into  pa- 
ganism, when  London  sacrificed  to  Diana,  and  West- 
minster to  Apollo,  and  they  found  that  all  was  lost, 

8  South  Wales  was  conquered  by  Henry  I. ;  North  Wales,  not  till  the 
reign  of  Edward  I. ;  while  the  conquest  of  Cornwall  was  effected  in  the 
tenth  century  by  King  Athelstan. 

Cornwall,  Cornu-GalHae,  "the  Horn  of  Wales." 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


43 


then,  A.D.  587,  they  were  forced  by  persecution  to  fly, 
and  to  join  their  brethren  in  Wales. 

In  those  parts  we  must  now  look  for  the  Primitive 
Church  of  this  land,  shut  off  indeed  from,  and  perhaps 
forgotten  by,  the  larger  portion  of  Christendom ;  but  now 
no  longer  standing  alone,  but  forming  one  with  its  sis- 
ter Churches  of  Ireland  and  Scotland,  (for,  as  we  shall 
see  presently,  about  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century 
a  combination  of  Churches  of  the  British  confession 
arose)  ;  conscious  of  no  submission  to  any  foreign 
Church,  but  gazing  fondly  back  to  Jerusalem'  and 
the  Holy  Land  rather  than  to  (although  not  to  the 
exclusion  of)  papal  Rome ;  with  its  own  Liturgy,  its 
own  customs,  its  own  peculiar,  although  erroneous, 
cycle  of  computing  Easter;  orthodox  in  belief;  hav- 
ing, as  we  learn  from  Gildas,  a  regularly-ordained 
Episcopate"^;  believing  its  Bishops  to  be  the  suc- 
cessors of  the  Apostles ;  its  priests  claiming  power  to 
bind  and  loose ;  the  hands  of  the  priests  and  inferior 
ministers  anointed and  certain  lessons   from  the 
Epistles  and  the  Acts  read  at  their  ordination  :  we 
learn  how  the  Church  also  had  societies  of  monks 
and  nuns  under  religious  vows ;   how  the  services 

'  St.  Columban,  in  a  letter  to  Pope  Boniface  IV.,  whilst  he  asserts  the 
independence  of  the  British  Church,  sets  the  Church  of  Jerusalem  above 
that  of  Rome  :  "You  are  almost  heavenly,  and  Rome  is  the  Head  of  the 
Churches  of  the  world,  saving  the  special  prerogative  of  the  Place  of  the 
Lord's  Resurrection." 

''  We  shall  find  that  seven  Bishops  from  Wales  (how  many  more  there 
may  have  been  we  have  no  means  of  judging)  met  for  conference  with 
St.  Augustine  :  and  all  the  Welsh  bishoprics  of  the  present  day  claim  a 
foundation  prior  to  Anglo-Saxon  times.  "  Eo  tempore  quo  Augustinus 
Monachus,  in  Britanniam  missus  est  a  Gregorio,  Christianismus  viguit, 
cum  fuerint  in  ea  septcm  episcopatus  et  unus  Archiepiscopatus." — (Gil- 
frid  de  Gest.  Brit.) 

'  "  Initiantur  sacerdotum  vel  ministrorum  manus." 


44 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


were  chanted,  and  the  churches  contained  several 
altars  dedicated  to  martyrs.  We  learn  also  from 
him  (although  probably  with  much  exaggeration), 
that  as  soon  as  the  terrors  of  the  Saxon  invasion 
had  subsided,  the  moral  condition  of  the  Britons 
was  deplorable ;  that  priests  as  well  as  people 
were  guilty  of  heinous  offences ;  that  bishops  and 
priests  were  guilty  of  simony,  and  cowardly  in  re- 
buking vice,  and  that  they  took  no  steps  to  con- 
vert the  hated  Saxons. 

It  is  of  the  greatest  consequence  that  we  should 
gather  all  the  information,  and  form  as  clear  a  view 
as  possible,  of  the  Church  in  Wales  :  for  it  cannot 
be  doubted  that  a  great  number  of  people  think, 
that  the  link  between  the  early  British  Church  and 
our  Church  of  the  present  day  was  snapped  asunder 
by  the  Saxon  invasion,  and  that  in  consequence  of 
this  a  new  Church  arose,  and  that  we  derive  our  ori- 
gin, not  from  the  Apostles,  but  St.  Augustine.  If 
we  have  to  regret  that  the  ecclesiastical  history  of 
the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries  is  veiled  in  obscurity,  it 
must  be  remembered  that  the  same  may  be  said  of 
the  civil  history  of  the  same  period.  Modern  cri- 
ticism has  shewn  the  almost  impossibility  of  extract- 
ing reliable  details  from  the  confused  traditions  of  the 
Saxon  conquest;  even  the  existence  of  Hengist  and 
Horsa,  of  Vortigern  and  Arthur  have  been  called  in 
question™,  and  that  by  no  mean  authorities.  Can  we 
wonder,  then,  when  Christianity  was  so  sorely  perse- 
cuted, when  its  persecutors  tried  all  they  could  to  de- 

"  Hengist  and  Horsa,  Vortigern  and  Rowena,  Arthur  and  Mordred 
are  mythical  persons,  whose  very  existence  may  be  questioned,  and 
whose  adventures  must  be  classed  with  those  of  Hercules  and  Romulus." 
— (Mac,  vol.  i.  p.  6.) 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


45 


stroy  all  vestiges  of  the  hated  religion  of  a  hated 
people,  when  Christianity  was  hunted  out  of  the 
largest  and  best  portions  of  the  country,  and  forced 
to  take  refuge  amongst  the  inaccessible  mountains  in 
a  remote  corner  of  the  land,  that  its  memorials  per- 
ished with  it,  or  that  the  little  Church  was  well-nigh 
forgotten.  We  must  be  content  with  such  docu- 
ments as  are  at  our  disposal ;  and  if  few  and  uncon- 
nected, these  are,  at  any  rate,  sufficient  for  our  pur- 
pose. There  are  three  very  reliable  tests  of  the 
condition  of  a  Church;  (i.)  its  missions;  (2.)  its 
colleges  and  schools  of  learning  ;  (3.)  the  number  of 
its  saints  and  holy  men ;  and,  judged  by  these  tests, 
we  shall  find  that  the  British  Church  held  an  im- 
portant position  in  Christendom. 

(i.)The  great  glory  of  the  British  Church  consisted 
in  its  missionary  enterprises,  which  caused  its  name  to 
be  regarded  with  reverence,  in  the  sixth  and  seventh 
centuries,  by  Christians  of  every  grade  throughout  the 
whole  north-west  Continent  of  Europe.  From  the 
middle  of  the  fifth  century  the  name  of  British  or 
Celtic  Churches  comprised  not  only  the  Christians  of 
Wales,  but  also  the  Irish  or  Scots,  and  the  Caledo- 
nians and  to  make  this  part  of  the  history  intelligible, 
it  will  be  necessary  to  say  a  few  words  as  to  the  ori- 
gin of  these  sister  Churches  of  the  British  confession. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  early  inhabit- 
ants of  Ireland  were  Scots.  "It  is  probable,"  says 
Gibbon",   "that  in  some  remote  period  of  antiquity 

°  Hook,  i.  10.  Under  the  name  "  BritanniccC  Insulae"  the  ancients  in- 
cluded Albion,  or  England,  and  Scotland,  and  Hibernia,  or  Ireland,  and 
the  adjacent  islands.  "The  Irish  Churches,"  says  Soames,  "might  be 
connected,  as  are  the  Church  of  England  and  the  Episcopal  Church  of 
North  America  ;  as  also  are  the  Churches  of  Italy  and  Spain." 

"  Decline  and  Fall,  vol.  iv.  p.  294. 


46 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES, 


the  fertile  plains  of  Ulster  received  a  colony  of  hun- 
gry Scots ;  ...  it  is  certain  that  in  the  declining  age 
of  the  Roman  Empire,  Caledonia,  Ireland,  and  the 
Isle  of  Man  were  inhabited  by  the  Scots."  Hence 
Ireland  was  generally  called  "  Scotia,"  or  "  Insula 
Scotorum,"  by  the  writers  of  the  sixth  and  seventh 
centuries  ;  and  the  name  of  Scotland,  as  applied  to  the 
northern  part  of  Britain,  which  was  at  that  time  in- 
habited solely  by  the  Picts,  is  of  comparatively  modern 
date.  In  process  of  time,  the  Scots  migrating  from 
Ireland  under  their  leader  Reuda^,  either  by  fair 
means  or  force  of  arms,  secured  to  themselves  those 
settlements  amongst  the  Picts  which  they  still  possess  ; 
for  a  time  the  two  peoples  answered  to  the  division  of 
Highlanders  and  Lowlanders  of  modern  times  ;  but  by 
degrees  the  Scots  gained  on,  and  subdued  the  Picts, 
till  in  the  ninth  century  they  became  supreme,  and 
gave  their  name  to  the  whole  country. 

During  the  early  part  of  the  fifth  century,  St.  Ninian, 
the  son  of  a  British  chief,  preached  to  the  southern 
Picts,  a  people  of  whom  it  was  said  before  their  con- 
version, "  they  had  more  hair  on  their  faces  than  clothes 
on  their  bodies."  He  established  his  see  at  Whithorn, 
in  Galloway,  and  there  he  dedicated  a  church  to  St. 
Martin,  which,  on  account  of  its  being  built  of  white 
stone,  received  the  name  "  Candida  Casa,"  a  name 
afterwards  given  to  the  see.  After  labouring  amongst 
them  for  eight  years,  their  violence  compelled  him  to 
leave  the  country,  and  he  took  refuge  in  Ireland. 

About  A.D.  440,  Patrick,  a  native  of  North  Britain, 
went  into  Ireland,  and  established  Christianity  in  the 
country,  from  which  circumstance  he  is  commonly 


Bede,  chap.  i. 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


47 


known  as  the  Apostle  of  Ireland  Patrick,  whose  ori- 
ginal name  was  Succoth,  but  to  whom  that  of  Patricius, 
or  Patrick,  was  given  on  account  of  his  noble  birth,  is 
generally  supposed  to  have  been  born  in  a  village  near 
Dumbarton,  which  after  him  is  called  Kirkpatrick'^ : 
his  father,  Calpurnius,  was  a  deacon,  and  his  mother 
is  supposed  to  have  been  a  sister  of  St.  Martin  of  Tours. 
Patrick  had  already  in  his  youth  become  acquainted 
with  Ireland,  for  in  his  sixteenth  year  he,  with  his  two 
sisters,  had  been  carried  captive  there  by  a  band  of 
pirates  :  after  six  years  he  made  his  escape ;  but  after 
he  was  ordained  priest,  he  felt  himself  called  by  visions 
to  preach  the  Gospel  in  the  land  of  his  captivity.  Pal- 
ladius  ^  a  Briton,  who  had  been  ordained  deacon  at 
Rome,  had  before,  in  431,  gone  on  a  mission  to  Ire- 
land, but  his  mission  failed,  and  he  was  expelled  from 
the  country  by  Sinell,  king  of  Leinster;  the  mission 
of  St.  Patrick,  who  was  ordained  bishop  a.d.  441,  when 
he  was  nearly  seventy  years  of  age,  was  eminently  suc- 
cessful, his  first  convert  being  the  king  himself  About 
A.D.  454  he  fixed  his  see  at  Armagh,  which  has  ever 
since  continued  the  seat  of  the  Irish  Primacy;  and,  ac- 
cording to  Archbishop  Usher,  he  died  a.d.  493,  at  the 
age  of  120  years,  having  laboured  amongst  the  Irish 
for  fifty  years,  and  (if  we  can  believe  his  Irish  Biog- 
raphers) founded  365  churches,  and  baptized  12,000 
persons. 

In  the  following  century,  Ireland  was  able  to  repay 

1  The  Isle  of  Man  is  said  to  have  received  its  first  Bishop  from 
St.  Patrick,  about  A.D.  447.    Churton,  Ancient  Brit.  Ch.  19. 

'  Some  think  he  was  born  at  Boulogne,  but  he  mentions  his  birth- 
place as  being  "in  Britanniis." 

'  That  Christians  existed  in  Ireland  even  before  the  mission  of  Palla- 
dius,  see  Haddan  and  Stubbs'  Councils  and  Ecclesiastical  Documents, 
vol.  ii.  part  ii.  p.  288. 


48 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


the  debt  she  owed  to  Scotland.  In  565 St,  Columba, 
an  Irish  Abbot  from  Durrogh,  in  Ireland,  one  of 
St.  Patrick's  monasteries,  crossed  over  to  Scotland  in 
a  boat  made  of  ox-hides,  and  there  founded  in  Hy, 
one  of  the  Hebrides,  the  famous  monastery  of  lona, 
called  after  him,  Icolm-kill,  or,  the  Island  of  Columba 
of  the  Celts,  which  long  remained  famous  as  a  seat  of 
learning  and  religion,  and  became  the  parent  of  many 
other  monasteries.  Making  this  monastery  his  start- 
ing-point, he  laboured  for  forty  years  with  great  suc- 
cess on  the  neighbouring  shores  of  Scotland,  and  the 
north  of  England 

From  an  early  period,  a  strong  missionary  spirit 
seems  to  have  pervaded  these  monasteries  of  Ireland 
and  Scotland  ;  and  before  the  coming  of  St.  Augustine, 
a  remarkable  body  of  missionaries  had  started  from 
Britain  for  the  conversion  of  the  Continent  ^  In  589, 
Columban,  a  monk,  from  the  Irish  monastery  of  Ban- 
gor, crossed  into  Gaul,  and,  establishing  himself  in 
the  Vosges,  founded  three  monasteries  of  Anegray, 
Luxeuil,  and  Fontaines,  into  which  he  introduced  the 
British  customs,  and  mode  of  observing  Easter.  In 
610,  after  a  residence  in  the  country  of  twenty  years, 
having  incurred  the  anger  of  King  Theodore,  he  was 
driven  from  his  court.  He  then  went  to  Metz,  and 
from  thence  into  Switzerland,  where  he  laboured  for 
some  time  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Zug  :  he  after- 

'  According  to  Bede. 

"  For  the  conversion  of  the  "  Australes  Picti"  by  St.  Ninian,  and  of  the 
"  Septentrionales  Picti"  by  St.  Cokimba,  see  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  vol.  ii. 
pt.  i.  p.  105. 

^  The  traditions  of  St.  Beatus,  after  whom  is  named  St.  Beatenberg,  on 
the  Lake  of  Thun,  of  Mansuetus,  Bishop  of  Toul,  of  Marcellus,  Bishop  of 
Treves,  and  of  Cataldus,  in  the  first  and  second  centuries,  and  of  Mello, 
Bishop  of  Rouen,  in  the  third,  rest  on  no  sufficient  authority. 


i 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


49 


wards  went  into  Italy,  where,  having  founded  the 
monastery  of  Bobbio  amongst  the  Cottian  Alps,  he 
died  A.D.  615. 

St.  Gall,  the  countryman  and  pupil  of  St.  Columban, 
having  been  prevented  from  accompanying  him  into 
Italy,  remained  behind  in  Switzerland  (of  which  country 
he  is  called  the  Apostle),  and  founded  there  the  fa- 
mous monastery,  which  after  him  was  called  St.  Gall. 
He  died  a.d.  627. 

On  his  way  to  Rome,  a.d.  677,  to  seek  redress 
against  Archbishop  Theodore  and  King  Egfrid,  Wil- 
frid, a  Saxon,  brought  up  in  the  British  Church,  of 
whom  we  shall  hear  more  in  a  succeeding  chapter, 
was  carried  by  a  storm  into  Friesland,  where  he 
preached  the  Gospel  with  great  success ;  the  king, 
Adalgis,  together  with  most  of  the  chiefs,  and  many 
thousands  of  the  people,  being  converted.  But  Adal- 
gis, having  been  succeeded  by  Radbod,  a  heathen,  for 
some  time  the  work  of  evangelization  was  stopped. 
In  the  year  690,  a  monk  named  Willibrord,  who  had 
been  trained  in  Wilfrid's  monastery  at  Ripon,  set  out 
with  twelve  monks  for  Frisia  ;  and,  having  been  con- 
secrated an  Archbishop  at  Rome,  under  the  more 
euphonious  name  of  Clement,  fixed  his  see,  by  per- 
mission of  Charles  Martel,  the  grandfather  of  Charle- 
magne, at  Utrecht^,  and  succeeded  in  extirpating  pa- 
ganism from  a  large  part  of  Frisia.  He  died  a.d,  739, 
in  his  eighty-second  year. 

The  conversion  of  Thuringia  was  commenced  by 
Kilian,  who,  arriving  in  the  country  about  a.d.  686, 
at  the  head  of  a  band  of  Irish  missionaries,  was  kindly 
received  by  Duke  Gozbert,  who  resided  at  Wurzburg. 
But  Kilian,  having  induced  him  to  part  with  his  wife 

'  Bede  says  it  was  at  Wittaburg,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  Rhine. 


50 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


Geilana,  who  had  previously  been  married  to  his  bro- 
ther, Geilana  in  revenge  murdered  him,  with  two  of 
his  companions  ;  in  consequence  of  which,  the  venge- 
ance of  Heaven  is  said  to  have  pursued  the  ducal 
house,  till  it  speedily  became  extinct. 

Bede  ^  relates  the  touching  story  of  two  Saxon 
priests,  named  Ewald,  called,  for  distinction's  sake, 
the  one  "  black,"  and  the  other  "  white  "  Ewald  ;  who, 
following  the  examples  of  Willibrord  and  his  followers, 
went  on  a  mission  to  Saxony,  They  were  hospitably 
received  into  the  house  of  the  steward,  who  promised 
to  introduce  them  to  the  Ealdorman  (for  Bede  says 
these  Saxons  had  no  king),  and  they  continued  "  in 
prayer,  and  singing  of  Psalms  and  hymns,  and  daily 
offerins:  the  sacrifice  of  the  savins  oblation."  But  the 
pagans,  fearing  lest  their  chief  might  be  converted,  fell 
upon  the  two  priests,  and  put  them  to  a  cruel  death, 
"  white "  Ewald  being  dispatched  immediately  by  a 
single  sword-stroke,  whilst  "black"  Ewald  suffered 
dreadful  tortures,  and  was  torn  limb  from  limb. 
Their  martyrdom  took  place  a.d.  695,  near  Cologne, 
where  their  bodies,  which  had  been  thrown  into  the 
Rhine,  being  recovered  by  their  companions,  were 
interred. 

The  end  of  the  seventh,  or  early  part  of  the 
eighth  century,  marks  the  culminating  point  of  the 
British  Churches ;  at  that  time  the  extent  of  the  non- 
Roman  communion  throughout  Europe  well-nigh  ba- 
lanced that  of  the  Roman  side  :  it  seemed  that  the 
Christian  world  would  see  a  combination  of  Churches, 
of  which  the  British  Isles  would  have  been  the  nu- 
cleus, as  widely  spread,  and  far  better  united  than  the 
Rome  itself  of  that  day,  untorn  by  dissensions,  un- 

'  Book  V.  10. 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


51 


assailed  by  Arian  barbarians,  and  as  independent  of 
Rome  as  the  patriarchates  of  Antioch  or  Alexandria  ^ 
The  names  of  Bishop  Wilfrid  and  Archbishop  Theo- 
dore at  home,  and  of  St.  Boniface  abroad,  mark  the 
decadence  of  the  British  Church,  and  the  commence- 
ment of  its  absorption  into  that  of  Rome.  In  the 
eighth  century,  the  most  famous  of  all, — although  he 
belonged  rather  to  the  English  than  the  British  Church, 
— left  these  shores  as  a  missionary,  Winfrid  ^  or,  as  he 
is  better  known,  St.  Boniface,  the  "  Apostle  of  Ger- 
many." Born  at  Crediton  about  a.d.  680,  at  the  age 
of  seven  he  entered  a  monastery  at  Exeter,  from 
which  he  removed  to  a  Hampshire  monastery  named 
Nutscelle;  and,  by  the  advice  of  its  abbot  took  Holy 
Orders.  The  monks  were  desirous  of  making  Winfrid 
their  abbot ;  but  a  noble  impulse  of  piety  led  him  to 
desire  the  life  of  a  foreign  missionary,  so  he  joined  the 
aged  Willibrord  at  Utrecht  about  716.  He  shortly 
afterwards  returned  to  England,  and,  starting  a  second 
time  to  Frisia  in  718,  took  with  him  letters  of  recom- 
mendation from  Daniel,  Bishop  of  Winchester ;  and, 
going  to  Rome  in  723,  he  was  consecrated  under  the 
Italian  name  of  Boniface,  not  to  any  particular  diocese, 
but  as  missionary  Bishop  to  Germany,  by  Pope  Gre- 
gory II.,  who  bound  him,  as  the  condition  of  his  ordi- 
nation, by  an  oath  of  obedience  or  allegiance  to  the 
see  of  Rome.  This  is  the  first  instance  of  an  oath  of 
allegiance  being  taken  to  the  Pope,  and  it  must  be 
confessed  that  Boniface,  even  if  he  were  not  a  servile 
follower"^  of  Rome,  did  much  to  increase  the  Pope's 

°  Haddan's  Remains,  p.  318. 

The  name  must  not  be  confused  with  that  of  Wilfrid. 
"  The  French  Benedictine  monks  remark  on  the  sycophancy  of  Boni- 
face to  the  Roman  pontiff:  "II  exprime  son  devouement  pour  le  S.  Si^ge 

E  2 


52 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


influence  both  on  the  Continent  and  in  England.  After 
a  long  course  of  missionary  labour,  he  was  appointed 
to  the  see  of  Mayence  with  archiepiscopal  rank,  and 
received  the  pall  from  Gregory  III.  soon  after  his 
accession.  And  here  he  might  well  have  rested  from 
his  labours.  But  he  still  yearned  after  his  missionary 
life ;  so,  laying  aside  his  dignities,  he  resumed  his 
work  in  Friesland,  which,  in  his  early  life,  he  had  in 
vain  tried  to  bring  to  the  faith.  The  great  success  he 
met  with  embittered  those  who  remained  unconverted  ; 
and,  A.D.  754,  his  holy  and  laborious  life  was  brought 
to  a  violent  end,  and  he  suffered  martyrdom.  He  had 
given  notice  of  a  Confirmation,  and  was  expecting 
a  large  number  of  his  catechumens ;  instead  of  these, 
an  armed  band  of  pagans  rushed  into  his  tent,  and 
murdered  the  holy  man,  together  with  his  whole  com- 
pany, fifty-two  in  number. 

But,  famous  as  was  the  British  Church  in  the  work 
of  foreign  missions,  it  must  be  confessed  that  it  en- 
tirely neglected  the  conversion  of  its  hated  Saxon 
neighbours.  It  failed  in  its  duty;  and  so  the  ground 
that  it  ought  to  have  occupied,  was  occupied  by  the 
foreigner.  But  when  once  the  British  Church  was 
aroused  to  its  duty,  we  shall  find  its  success  amongst 
the  pagan  kingdoms  of  England  was  as  remarkable  as 
it  was  praiseworthy.  A  small  part  only  of  the  Saxon 
Heptarchy  was  converted  to  Christianity  by  mission- 
aries from  Rome  ;  by  far  the  largest  portion  owes  its 
conversion  to  missionaries  of  the  native  Church. 

(2.)  We  must  now  pass  on  to  the  schools  and  col- 
leges of  the  British  Church.  As  long  as  the  Roman 
empire  lasted,  the  establishment  of  schools  in  the  va- 

quelquefois  en  des  termes  qui  ne  sont  pas  assez  proportion's,  a  la  dignitd 
du  charact^re  episcopal." 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


53 


rious  parts  of  the  empire  was  undertaken  by  it.  To 
supply  the  loss  of  the  Roman  schools,  St.  German  had 
recommended  the  Britons  to  build  monasteries  ;  and  he 
appears  to  have  founded  himself  the  famous  monastery 
of  Banofor-Iscoed.  The  most  famous  schools  were 
those  of  St.  Dubricius  and  Iltutus.  The  former,  who  is 
said  to  have  been  the  son  of  a  petty  king  ^  for  seven 
years  taught  at  Hentland,  in  Monmouthshire,  where 
he  had  no  less  than  a  thousand  students  ;  great  num- 
bers of  pupils,  such  as  SS.  Telian  and  Sampson,  flock- 
ing to  him  from  all  parts  of  Britain.  Iltutus  kept 
a  scarcely  less  famous  school  in  Glamorganshire,  Gildas 
being  one  of  his  pupils,  at  a  place  called  after  him, 
Llanyltad,  or,  the  Church  of  Iltutus. 

One  of  the  most  famous  seats  of  learning,  was  the 
monastery  of  Llancarvan,  in  Glamorganshire,  which 
St.  Cadok  founded,  and  of  which  he  became  the  first 
abbot.  To  this  monastery  were  admitted,  not  only 
candidates  for  the  monastic  life,  but  the  sons  of  the 
chiefs  and  petty  kings  of  Wales  ;  so  that  Llancarvan 
became  a  famous  school  for  social  and  secular  learning. 

The  monastic  community  at  Llancarvan  was  fol- 
lowed by  many  other  places  of  education,  or  monas- 
teries usually  bearing  the  name  of  Bangor,  i.e.  *'  high 
choir,  or  circle."  The  most  famous  of  these  was 
Bangor-Iscoed  ("under  the  wood"),  in  Flintshire;  it 
is  said  to  have  contained  two  thousand  monks  at  the 
time  of  its  destruction  by  King  Ethelred,  who  massa- 
cred twelve  hundred  of  them  Another  Bangor  was 
that  which  still  bears  the  name,  and  of  which  David 

Fuller  says,  B.  i.  29,  that  in  this  and  the  next  century  there  is  no 
mean  between  two  extremes ;  all  men  eminent  for  learning  and  religion 
are  either  without  known  fathers,  or  sons  of  kings. 
°  Bede,  B.  ii.  2. 


54 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


was,  as  was  not  uncommon  in  British  Churches,  both 
abbot  and  bishop.  Another  Bangor  was  the  fa- 
mous monastery  of  Llanelwy,  now  St.  Asaph,  found- 
ed under  direction  of  Kentigern,  or  St.  Mungo,  the 
Bishop  of  Glasgow,  who,  with  his  friend  St.  Asaph, 
is  said  to  have  founded  that  see  in  the  sixth  century ; 
into  this  men  of  all  ranks  and  ages  pressed,  to  the 
number  of  nine  hundred  and  sixty-five 

Besides  these,  there  were  the  White  House,  or 
Whitland,  in  Carmarthenshire,  founded  by  Paulinus, 
at  which  St.  David  was  educated,  and  the  great  col- 
lege of  Llanbadarn-Vaur,  founded  by  St.  Patern,  where 
one  of  the  most  venerable  churches  in  the  Principality 
still  exists^. 

(3.)  Nor  was  the  British  Church  deficient  in  eminent 
men.  Amongst  the  most  eminent  Bishops  was  Dubri- 
cius,  or  Dyfrig,  of  whom  mention  has  been  made  above. 
He  was  the  first  Bishop  of  Llandaff,  and  subsequently 
Archbishop  of  Caerleon-on-Usk  in  which  capacity 
he  is  said  to  have  crowned  Uther  Pendragon,  and  his 
son  Arthur;  but  this  was  impossible,  as  Dubricius, 
dying  probably  a.d.  612,  must  have  lived  long  after 
King  Arthur.  Under  him  a  council  was  held  at  Brovi, 
or  Llandewi,  in  Cardiganshire,  in  consequence  of  the 
revival  of  Pelagianism,  at  which,  the  Utrecht  manu- 
script states,  one  hundred  and  eighteen  Bishops  were 
present'.  Finding  himself  disqualified  on  account 
of  age,  he  resigned  his  archbishopric  to  St.  David. 

'  Forbes,  Cat.  of  Scottish  Saints.  «  Bright's  Early  English  Church. 
Dubricius  was  Archbishop  "  dextralis  partis  Britannije;"  by  this 
Archbishop  Usher  understands  South  Wales,  but  Bishop  Stillingfleet, 
with  greater  probability,  thinks  it  includes  both  North  and  South.  There 
is  much  difTerence  of  opinion  as  to  his  date,  some  placing  his  death  as 
early  as  A.D.  522. 

'  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  how  there  could  have  been  so  many  bishops : 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


55 


St.  David,  or  Dewi,  the  patron  saint  of  Wales,  is  said 
to  have  been  son  of  Xantus,  a  prince  of  Wales,  and 
uncle  to  King  Arthur.  Having  been  educated,  first 
at  Llanwit  Major,  and  afterwards  at  the  college  of 
Paulinus  at  Whitland,  he  visited  Jerusalem,  where  he 
received  ordination  at  the  hands  of  the  Patriarch ; 
after  his  return,  he  founded  and  became  head  of  a  so- 
ciety at  Hen-Mynyw,  at  which  the  most  rigorous  rule 
was  observed,  the  monks  being  obliged  to  plough 
and  cultivate  the  land  themselves,  without  the  help  of 
oxen.  By  permission  of  King  Arthur,  he  removed  the 
seat  of  the  Archbishopric  from  Caerleon  to  Menevia, 
called  after  him,  St.  David's ;  preferring,  as  was  cus- 
tomary with  the  British  Bishops,  the  monastic  seclu- 
sion of  that  retired  spot  to  the  populous  and  less  con- 
templative Caerleon.  He  had  taken  an  important  part 
in  the  Council  of  Brovi,  or,  as  it  was  called  after  him, 
Llandewi.  Under  him  another  Council  was  held,  at 
a  place  called  Victoria,  at  which  the  acts  of  the  Council 
of  Brovi  were  confirmed  ;  and  the  proceedings  of  these 
two  Councils  henceforward  became  the  rule  and  stand- 
ard of  the  British  Church.  St.  David  was  a  person 
of  great  learning  and  eloquence,  and  remarkable  for 
the  austerity  of  his  life.  He  built  a  church  at  Glas- 
tonbury, and  twelve  monasteries,  the  chief  of  which 
was  at  Menevia ;  and  having  lived  the  great  ornament 
and  pattern  of  his  time,  he  died  probably  a.d.  612^, 
being  146  years  of  age,  and  was  afterwards  canonized 
by  Calixtus  II. 

but  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  at  that  time  dioceses  were  much 
smaller  than  now,  and  no  doubt  much  more  numerous.  Many  bishops 
were  ordained,  e.g.  Sampson,  afterwards  Archbishop  of  Dole,  "  sine 
titulo." 

>  Some  place  his  death  as  late  as  a.d.  642;  others  as  early  as  A.D.  522. 


56 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


Sampson,  one  of  the  scholars  of  Iltutus,  having  been 
consecrated  a  Bishop  at  large  {sine  tittilo)  by  Dubricius, 
landed  in  Armorica'',  or  French  Britain,  a.d.  522.  He 
is  said  to  have  carried  with  him  the  monuments  of  the 
early  British  Church,  which  have  never  been  reco- 
vered, and  to  have  become  Archbishop  of  Dole  :  in 
Armorica,  many  British  Christians  found  a  refuge, 
particularly  St.  Malo,  St.  Brice,  and  Gildas  the  his- 
torian. 

St.  Cadok,  son  of  a  petty  king  of  South  Wales,  re- 
fusing to  succeed  his  father  in  his  principality,  founded 
the  monastery  of  Llancarvan,  where  he  spent  several 
years  of  his  early  life.  He  is  said  to  have  supported, 
besides  the  ordinary  hospitality  of  his  table,  three 
hundred  clergy  and  poor  people  out  of  his  patrimony. 
From  Wales  he  went  to  Armorica ;  and  after  remain- 
ing there  several  years,  he  returned  to  his  native 
country,  not,  however,  to  end  his  life  in  his  peaceful  mo- 
nastery at  Llancarvan,  but  he  chose  Weedon,  in  North- 
amptonshire, as  the  scene  of  his  labours ;  and  here, 
whilst  he  was  celebrating  the  divine  offices,  he  suffered 
martyrdom  at  the  hands  of  a  band  of  Saxons,  a.d.  570. 

St.  Patern,  the  friend  of  St.  David,  was  a  native  of 
Armorica,  and  came  over  first  to  Ireland,  and  then 
to  Wales,  where  a  church  was  dedicated  to  him,  under 
the  name  of  Llan-Badarn  Vaur  (the  Church  of  Patern 
the  Great),  which  was  made  into  an  episcopal  see,  and 
continued  so  for  many  years,  until  it  was  extinguished 
on  account  of  the  people  murdering  their  Bishop. 

Brittany,  on  the  coast  of  Gaul,  was  founded  during  the  Saxon 
troubles  by  a  colony  of  Britons  (whence  its  name),  as  a  convenient 
station  near  their  own  country,  where  they  might  receive  their  own 
countrymen  who  were  suffering  persecution,  or  return  home  if  they 
thought  fit. 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


57 


St.  Telian,  a  pupil  of  Dubricius,  and  the  intimate 
friend  of  St.  David  and  St.  Petroc,  succeeded  Dubricius 
as  second  Bishop  of  Llandafif,  and  after  him  in  that  see 
came  Oudoceus  as  third  bishop.  In  a  full  synod  of 
his  clergy,  held  a.d.  560,  he  excommunicated  Mourice, 
King  of  Glamorganshire,  for  murder.  After  being  ex- 
communicated for  two  years,  the  king  came  in  tears, 
and  asked  the  bishop  to  restore  him  to  communion  ; 
which  request,  after  a  severe  penance,  was  granted. 
Mention  is  made  in  the  book  of  Llandaff  of  other 
princes  being  excommunicated  by  him. 

St.  Kentigern,  popularly  known  as  St.  Mungo,  said 
to  be  the  son  of  a  British  prince,  Owen  ab  Urien 
Reged,  was  born  about  a.d.  514  at  Culross,  on  the 
Forth ;  proceeding  whence  he  planted  a  monastery  at 
Cathures,  now  called  Glasgow,  and  became  bishop  of 
the  kingdom  of  Cumbria,  and  with  SS.  Ninian  and 
Columba,  was  one  of  the  great  missionaries  of  Scot- 
land. Leaving  Scotland,  he  went  into  Wales,  and 
there  he  founded  another  monastery,  and  the  bishopric 
which  bears  the  name  of  his  pupil,  St.  Asaph ;  return- 
ing into  his  county,  he  died  at  Glasgow  about  a.d.  560 ; 
according  to  other  accounts  a.d.  601.  He  is  described 
as  a  person  of  great  piety  and  austerity,  frequently 
fasting  for  three  days  together ;  never  tasting  wine 
or  flesh,  and  wearing  goat-skins,  with  sackcloth  next 
his  skin. 

Next  to  St.  Kentigern,  whose  life  he  wrote,  must  be 
mentioned  his  pupil  St.  Asaph,  a  person  of  noble  birth, 
and  eminent  for  his  piety  and  learning  :  he  is  supposed 
to  have  died  about  a.d.  590. 

Of  SS.  Columba  and  Columban  mention  has  been 
made  above. 

It  remains  to  mention  Gildas  the  historian.  He 


58 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


was  born,  according  to  Archbishop  Usher,  a.d.  520, 
and  died  a.d.  570 ;  and  having  been  educated  in  the  fa- 
mous school  of  Iltutus,  he  became  a  monk  at  Bangor. 
He  was  a  person  of  great  piety;  but  Gibbon  not  un- 
justly describes  his  writings,  which  are  very  severe, 
especially  against  princes  and  clerg}',  as  the  produc- 
tion of  a  monk  utterly  ignorant  of  human  nature. 
Archbishop  Usher  thinks  he  wrote  his  work,  De 
Excidio  Britannicu,  a.d.  564.  He  says  he  had  re- 
frained from  writing  for  ten  years,  but  the  sins  of 
his  countrymen  no  longer  allowed  him  to  keep  silence. 
His  work,  which  he  wrote  in  Armorica,  at  the  request 
of  his  countrymen  who  w^ere  settled  there,  is  divided 
into  two  parts,  the  "  history  "  and  the  "  epistle,"  which 
last  again  is  divided  into  the  "  Increpatio  in  reges" 
and  the  "  Increpatio  in  clerum."  His  works  were 
well  known  to  literary  men  in  the  seventh  and  eighth 
centuries  ;  six  chapters  of  Bede's  first  book '  are  almost 
entirely  a  transcription  from  Gildas  ;  and  Alcuin  twice 
speaks  of  him  as  "  Brettonum  sapientissimus."  Be- 
sides his  extant  works,  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  speaks 
of  a  larger  historical  work,  which  apparently  is  lost  ^. 

Of  the  Church  of  Cornwall,  or,  as  it  then  was,  the 
south  of  Wales,  we  know  but  little.  This  much,  how- 
ever, is  certain,  that  the  Christians  in  Cornwall  were 
numerous,  and  that  they  retained  their  ancient  customs 
and  liturgy  till  the  seventh  century.  During  the  fifth 
and  sixth  centuries,  Cornwall  had  been  receiving  from 
Ireland  a  succession  of  missionaries,  including  some 
w^omen,  whose  work  is  still  remembered  in  the  nomen- 

'  The  twelfth,  thirteenth,  fourteenth,  fifteenth,  sixteenth,  and  twenty- 
second. 

■°  Unless  it  is  contained,  as  Turner  (Angl,  Sax.  i.  201)  thinks,  in  the 
"  Historia  Britonum"  of  Nennius. 


THE  BRITISH  CHURCH  IN  WALES. 


59 


clature  of  the  country.  Cornwall,  says  Fuller  "  is  the 
cornucopia  of  saints,  most  of  Irish  extraction."  "  If," 
says  the  Bishop  of  Truro  °,  "  St.  Augustine  had  gone 
to  Cornwall,  he  would  not  have  found  there,  as  many 
perhaps  might  suppose,  a  multitude  of  heathen  people, 
but  there  he  would  have  found  people  holding  the 
full  knowledge  of  the  Gospel  ;  worshipping  there 
day  after  day,  as  well  as  from  Sunday  to  Sunday. 
St.  Augustine  would  have  found  himself  amongst  peo- 
ple who  knew  and  loved  the  same  Gospel  which  he 
taught.  They  knew  that  in  the  fifth  century  there 
came  over  from  Ireland,  which  was  already  Christian, 
missionary  after  missionary,  who  took  up  his  abode  in 
their  coasts.  There  came  St.  Breoka,  who  had  left  her 
name  in  Breage,  St.  la,  St.  Ives,  St.  Uny,  St.  Gwithin, 
St.  Piran."  The  Cornish  Church  owed  very  little  to 
Romanists ;  who,  on  the  contrary,  tried  all  they  could 
to  obliterate  the  memory  of  those  saints. 

"  B.i.  II.  °  Sermon  preached  at  Peranzabuloe,  August,  1878. 


PART  II. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND. 

/GREGORY  I.,  the  best  and  greatest  of  his  name 
became  Pope  of  Rome,  at  a  time  when  it  might 
be  expected  he  would  find  trouble  enough  at  home, 
to  prevent  his  attempting  the  conversion  of  Eng- 
land. For  at  that  time  Rome  had  reached  the 
lowest  depth  of  degradation ;  so  lamentable  was 
its  condition,  as  to  lead  people  to  suppose  the  end 
of  the  world  was  at  hand.  The  Lombards  were 
overrunning  Italy,  and  no  help  could  be  obtained 
from  Constantinople,  or  from  the  Exarch  :  the  Tiber 
had  overflowed  its  banks,  and  destroyed  the  gran- 
aries of  corn ;  and  a  severe  pestilence,  in  which  the 
Pope  Pelagius  died,  had  followed.  Nor  was  the 
state  of  the  Church  much  better ;  Gregory  himself 
compares  it  to  "  an  old  and  violently-shattered  ship, 
admitting  the  waters  on  all  sides,  its  timbers  rotten, 
shaken  by  daily  storms  And  even  if  that  fatherly 
tenderness  and  loving  charity  which  characterized 
every  action  of  his  life  could  find  time,  amidst  his 
other  duties,  to  think  of  the  conversion  of  the  hea- 
then, why  should  England  be  the  favoured  nation 
England  was  not  the  only  pagan  country  in  Europe. 
All  Germany,  and  all  nations  from  the  Rhine  to  the 
frozen  ocean,  and  all  the  Slavonian  tribes,  were  equally 
pagan.    Rome  had  long  considered  England  as  se- 

»  Ep.  i.  44. 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND. 


6i 


parated  from  the  whole  world,  as  approaching  the 
frozen  Thule ;  especially  of  late  years,  it  had  been 
cut  off  by  its  German  conquerors  from  all  inter- 
course with  the  civilized  world,  so  that  of  all  coun- 
tries it  seemed  the  least  likely  to  attract  the  atten- 
tion of  a  Roman  pontiff. 

Gregory,  when  he  first  formed  the  benevolent 
desire  of  converting  England,  was  only  a  private 
monk ;  but  he  was  a  man  who,  in  whatever  capacity 
of  life  he  was  (and  he  went  through  several),  united 
in  his  person  every  quality  which  goes  to  make  a 
man  not  only  nominally,  but  really  great.  Born  at 
Rome,  of  an  illustrious  family,  about  a.d.  540;  hav- 
ing a  Pope  (Felix)  for  his  great-grandfather^,  and 
two  sainted  sisters  for  his  aunts,  endowed  with  talent 
and  riches,  and  with  earthly  fame  within  his  reach  ; 
appointed  at  an  early  age  praetor  of  Rome ;  he  vo- 
luntarily relinquished  all  to  devote  himself  to  the 
Church.  From  his  own  wealth  he  founded  seven  mon- 
asteries, one  that  of  St.  Andrew  in  his  own  family 
mansion  of  Rome ;  and  into  that,  having  lavished 
on  the  poor  all  his  costly  robes,  his  silk,  his  gold, 
his  jewels,  and  his  furniture,  he  retired,  not,  how- 
ever, assuming  at  first  the  abbacy  of  his  own  con- 
vent, but  commencing  with  the  lowest  monastic  du- 
ties, and  devoting  himself  to  the  most  severe  asceti- 
cism. During  the  time  that  the  plague  was  desolating 
Rome,  Gregory  braved  all  its  dangers,  and  forming 
the  citizens  into  choirs,  he  traversed  the  streets, 
chanting  penitential  litanies  with  the  view  to  ap- 
peasing Heaven''.    Rome  was  full  of  the  praise  of 

A  proof  that  celibacy  was  not  at  the  time  enforced. 

The  custom  of  chanting  htanies  in  procession,  in  times  of  danger, 
having  originated  in  the  East,  was  prevalent  in  the  Church  in  the  fourth 
century.  St.  Gregory  the  Great  collected  the  existing  litanies  into  one, 
which  was  received  into  this  country  by  the  Council  of  Cloveshoo,  A.D.  747. 


62 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


such  magnanimity  and  self-denial,  and  when,  in  a.d. 
590,  Pelagius  was  carried  off  by  the  plague,  he  was 
elected  as  his  successor  by  the  unanimous  voice  of 
the  clergy,  senate  and  people. 

Gregory  reluctantly  accepted  the  office,  after  he 
had  used  every  means  to  escape  it :  he  was  forced 
to  yield,  and  was  consecrated  in  September,  590. 

"Nothing,"  says  Milman*^,  "was  too  great,  nothing 
too  small  for  his  earnest  personal  solicitude ;  from 
the  most  minute  points  of  ritual,  or  regulations  about 
the  papal  power  in  Sicily,  he  passes  to  the  conver- 
sion of  Britain,  the  extirpation  of  simony  amongst  the 
clergy  of  Gaul,  negotiations  with  the  armed  con- 
querors of  Italy,  the  revolutions  of  the  Eastern  em- 
pire, the  title  of  universal  Bishop  usurped  by  John 
the  Faster,  of  Constantinople."  He  laboured  dili- 
gently as  a  preacher.  In  learning  he  was  inferior 
to  none;  his  book  on  "Pastoral  care  "was  for  many 
centuries  the  manual  of  the  Western  Church.  As 
St.  Ambrose  introduced  into  Milan  the  Ambrosian 
chant,  so  Gregory  increased  the  number  of  tones 
from  four  to  eight,  and  introduced  that  method  of 
singing  which,  under  the  name  of  the  Gregorian  Chant, 
is  the  basis  of  Church-singing  in  the  present  day  ^ 

But  the  one  great  act  which  concerns  us  most  is 
his  mission  to  the  English.  During  the  time  that 
Gregory  was  Abbot  of  St.  Andrews,  the  traffic  in 
slaves  was  carried  on  extensively  at  Rome One 
day,  when  he  was  walking  in  the  market-place  of 

^  Lat.  Christ,  i.  439. 

•  Gibbon,  while  admitting  the  full  extent  of  his  disinterestedness,  yet 
without  giving  any  reason,  speaks  of  "his  virtues  and  his  faults,  a  singular 
mixture  of  simplicity  and  cunning,  of  sense  and  superstition."  Hume  also 
depreciates  him,  but  without  giving  any  reason. 

'  The  traffic  of  slaves  was  allowed  even  by  councils  (e.g.  that  of  Agde, 
A.D.  506)  not  only  to  laymen,  but  also  to  the  clergy  and  monks. 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND. 


63 


that  city,  his  attention  was  attracted  to  some  fair- 
haired  boys  who  were  exposed  there  to  sale.  He 
was  told  by  the  slave-owner  that  they  were  "  Angles  :" 
the  resemblance  of  their  name  to  that  of  angels,  and 
the  contrast  of  their  heathen  condition,  at  once  inter- 
ested him.  Their  country,  Deira,  which  we  may 
broadly  call  Yorkshire,  suggested  to  him  that  they 
ought  to  be  snatched  "  from  the  wrath "  (de  ira)  of 
God.  The  name  of  their  king,  Ella,  suggested  Alle- 
lujah,  and  that  the  praises  of  God  ought  to  be  sung 
in  their  kingdom.  He  went  to  the  Pope,  and  offered 
himself  as  a  missionary  to  the  English  nation ;  he 
even  started  upon  his  journey,  but  so  popular  was  he 
at  Rome,  and  so  little  could  the  people  spare  him, 
that  the  Pope  was  forced  to  order  his  return.  But 
he  never  forgot  that  scene  in  the  market-place,  and 
when  he  became  himself  Pope,  he  set  himself  to  the 
work  which  he  had  so  long  at  heart.  Four  years 
afterwards  he  sent  off  a  party  of  about  forty  monks 
to  England,  having  selected  Augustine,  the  Prior 
of  his  OAvn  monastery,  as  their  head.  They  started 
on  their  journey,  making  a  halt  amongst  the  monastic 
recluses  of  Lerins,  where  they  received  a  hearty 
welcome.  But  the  monks  of  Lerins  told  them  of 
the  difficulties  and  dangers  of  the  journey,  of  the 
fierce  nature  of  the  Saxons,  and  of  their  barbarous 
language.  The  missionaries  lost  heart,  and  were  for 
returning  home :  so  they  sent  back  Augustine  to 
Rome  to  induce  Gregory  to  relieve  them  from  their 
task.  But  Gregory  was  not  so  easily  daunted  :  he 
gently  rebuked  the  cowardice  of  Augustine,  he  en- 
couraged them  to  resume  their  journey,  and,  to  give 
Augustine  greater  authority,  he  created  him  Abbot, 
supplying  him  with  letters  of  commendation  to  the 


64 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


Bishop  of  Aries  and  other  bishops.  Augustine,  thus 
strengthened,  rejoined  his  companions,  and  having 
provided  themselves  with  interpreters  in  Gaul,  where 
they  wintered,  the  missionaries  landed  in  the  Isle 
of  Thanet,  a.d.  597. 

Under  ordinary  circumstances  we  may  doubt  whe- 
ther the  worshippers  of  Wodin  would  readily  have 
exchanged  their  paganism  for  the  religion  of  Christ. 
There  were  not  wanting,  indeed,  in  the  Saxon  cha- 
racter, certain  traits  which  would  render  them  amen- 
able to  the  softer  influences  of  Christianity.  Their 
free  spirit,  the  lofty  sense  of  personal  honour,  and, 
above  all,  their  high  estimate  of  women  ;  these  were 
principles  capable  of  being  turned  into  a  purer  and 
nobler  channel.  Gregory  himself  says  that  he  had 
been  informed  of  their  desire  for  Christian  instruc- 
tion, and  blames  the  Gallic  Bishops  for  not  having 
imparted  it  to  them  ^. 

But  the  time  chosen  was  providential.  Ethelbert, 
King  of  Kent,  and  Bretwalda^  over  the  other  king- 
doms of  the  heptarchy,  had  married  a  Christian  wife. 
Bertha,  daughter  of  Charibert,  King  of  Paris,  on  the 
condition  that  she  should  be  allowed  to  follow  her 
religion,  and  to  take  with  her  her  priest,  Luidhard. 
For  her  use  a  British  church  (St.  Martin's,  Canter- 
bury), had  been  restored  and  rendered  fit  for  service'. 
Augustine  landed  with  singular  advantages ;  he  was 
the  messenger  of  the  Pope,  whose  spiritual  power  was 
widely  acknowledged  through  Europe ;  he  was  forti- 
fied with  recommendations  from  the  king  of  France ; 
and  was  secure  of  the  favour  of  the  queen.  Ethelbert, 


«  Ep.  vi.  ^  Wielder  of  Britain. 

'  Nor  can  we  doubt  that,  under  the  influence  of  the  most  important 
lady  in  the  land,  converts  to  the  faith  had  already  been  made. 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND. 


65 


who  no  doubt  had  already  looked  on  Christianity  with 
a  favouring  eye,  was  willing  to  receive  the  mission- 
aries ;  but  habitual  prudence,  and  no  doubt  a  fear  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  Witagemot,  as  well  as  the  oppo- 
sition from  the  pagan  priests,  induced  him  to  act  with 
caution.  However,  after  a  few  days  he  went  to  meet 
them  in  the  Isle  of  Thanet,  the  same  place  where 
Hengist  and  Horsa  had  landed  a  century  and  a-half 
before  ;  but  being,  as  a  Teuton,  a  believer  in  "  witch- 
lore  ^"  he  sat  in  the  open  air,  that  being,  as  was 
thought,  less  subject  than  a  house  to  magic. 

The  missionaries  approached  him  in  procession,  one 
carrying  a  silver  cross,  another  a  banner  with  a  painted 
portrait  of  the  Saviour,  and  all  chanting  the  Litany. 
Through  their  interpreter,  they  told  the  king  their 
purpose.  He  received  them  kindly  :  "  Fair  words," 
said  he,  but  being  "  new  and  doubtful,  I  cannot  give 
in  to  them,  and  give  up  all  that  I  and  the  English 
people  have  so  long  observed."  This  was  as  much  as 
they  could  expect  at  the  first  meeting.  He  allowed 
them  to  preach,  he  provided  also  their  sustenance, 
and  gave  them  a  temporary  abode  in  the  stable-gate 
at  Durovernum  (Canterbury).  They  took  the  church 
of  St.  Martin  for  their  services  ;  and  by  their  preach- 
ing, as  well  as  by  their  holy  and  self-denying  lives, 
their  frequent  prayers  and  fastings,  they  soon  made 
many  converts,  and  on  Whitsunday  Ethelbert  himself 
was  baptized,  probably  in  St.  Martin's. 

Augustine,  finding  that  so  great  a  work  had  begun, 
saw  the  necessity  of  his  assuming  episcopal  functions  ; 
so  in  the  autumn,  according  to  Gregory's  directions,  he 
repaired  to  France,  where  he  was  consecrated  by  Ver- 
gilius.  Bishop  of  Aries,  and  vE^therius,  Bishop  of  Lyons, 

^  Kemble,  i.  458. 
F 


66 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


as  "Archbishop  of  the  English  ;"  returning  to  England, 
he  received  from  the  king,  who  retired  to  Reculver, 
the  gift  of  his  own  palace  for  a  residence,  and  met 
with  such  success,  that  Gregory  was  enabled  to  an- 
nounce, in  a  letter  to  Eulogius,  Patriarch  of  Alex- 
andria, that  more  than  ten  thousand  Kentish  men 
were  baptized  on  Christmas-day. 

In  the  spring  of  598,  Augustine  despatched  two 
messengers,  Laurence,  a  priest,  and  Peter,  a  monk, 
to  Rome,  asking  for  additional  help,  and  also  the 
advice  of  Gregory  as  to  the  management  of  his  new 
diocese.  Gregory  had  evidently  much  to  occupy  him 
at  the  time  :  he  was  also  suffering  from  ill-health,  so 
he  did  not  till  a.d.  601  send  him  his  instructions; 
a  few  of  which  must  be  mentioned. 

Augustine  had  consulted  him  as  to  the  difference 
between  the  Roman  and  Gallican  Liturgies,  the  latter 
of  which  was  in  use  at  St.  Martin's.  Gregory  told 
him  to  use  whichever  was  most  conducive  to  piety, 
and  adapted  to  the  English  nation.  As  to  another 
question,  how  he  was  to  deal  with  the  bishops  of  Gaul 
and  Britain,  Gregory  gave  him  no  authority  over  the 
former,  but  placed  the  latter  under  his  jurisdiction  \ 
He  evidently  thought  Augustine  was  established  in 
London  :  London,  therefore,  was  to  be  one  metro- 
politan see,  with  twelve  suffragan  bishops ;  he  selected 
York,  meaning,  perhaps,  to  comprise  Scotland,  as  the 
other,  also  with  twelve  suffragans ;  and  the  two  metro- 

■  '  And  yet  Gregory  professed  reverence  for  the  first  four  Councils  : 
"  Sicut  quatuor  Evangelii  libros,  sic  quatuor  concilia  venerari  me  fateor." 
In  the  eighth  Canon  of  the  Council  of  Ephesus,  the  principle  which,  from 
its,  in  the  first  instance,  relating  to  the  Church  in  Cyprus,  is  known  as  the 
"  Jus  Cyprium,"  is  laid  down,  that  "  no  bishop  shall  occupy  another  pro- 
vince which  has  not  been  subject  to  him  from  the  beginning." 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND. 


67 


politans,  after  the  death  of  Augustine,  were  to  take 
precedence  according  to  the  priority  of  their  conse- 
cration ™.  To  help  him  in  his  work,-  Gregory  sent 
four  other  missionaries,  MelHtus,  Justus,  PauHnus,  and 
Ruffinianus,  and  with  them  vestments  for  the  clergy, 
sacred  vessels  and  ornaments  for  the  church,  and 
some  relics  of  the  Apostles  and  martyrs,  and  some 
books  " ;  at  the  same  time  he  sent  him  the  pall  °. 

The  little  church  of  St.  Martin  soon  became  too 
small  for  the  increasing  converts.  Gregory  had  ad- 
vised Augustine  to  consecrate  the  heathen  temples, 
and  turn  them  into  Christian  churches ;  so  he  re- 
covered from  heathen  uses,  and  re-consecrated  an  old 
British  church,  which  stood  in  ruins  near  his  palace. 
This  church  was  on  the  spot  where  now  stands  Can- 
terbury Cathedral.  Between  this  and  St.  Martin's 
stood  what  had  once  been  another  British  church. 
This  church  also  he  re-dedicated  ;  and  here  he  laid 
the  foundation  of  the  great  monastery  of  SS.  Peter 
and  Paul,  which,  after  a  time,  took  the  name  of 
St.  Augustine.  On  this  site,  as  much  of  the  ancient 
structure  as  possible  being  retained,  was  built,  a. d.  1844, 
the  noble  college  of  St.  Augustine's,  with  a  view  to 
carrying  out  the  purpose  that  SS.  Gregory  and  Augus- 
tine had  so  much  at  heart,  the  education  of  mission- 
aries for  foreign  work. 

Thus  far  all  was  done  with  the  excellent  motive 

"  Sit  inter  Londonise  et  Eboracae  civitatis  episcopos  in  poste- 
nim  honoris  ista  distinctio  ut  ipse  prior  habeatur  qui  prius  fuerit  or- 
dinatus." 

°  The  books  which  are  summed  up  in  the  library  of  Trinity  Hall,  Cam- 
bridge as,  "  primitias  librorum  totius  Ecclesise  Anglicante,"  appear  to 
have  been  a  Bible  in  two  volumes,  two  books  of  the  Gospels,  two  Psalters, 
Apocryphal  Lives  of  the  Apostles,  Lives  of  Martyrs,  and  Expositions  of 
some  Gospels  and  Epistles.  "  See  Appendix  I. 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


of  conciliating  the  English  people ;  the  next  step 
Augustine  took  was  the  one  most  calculated  to  dis- 
gust them.    If  Gregory  had  known  that  the  British 
Church,  wasted  away  as  it  was  with  persecution,  en- 
joyed a  claim  equal  to  his  own  of  an  Apostolical 
foundation,  he  would  not  have  forgotten  his  con- 
troversy with  John  the  Faster,  as  well  as  the  Ephe- 
sine  Canon,  and  placed  a  primitive  and  independent 
Church  under  the  jurisdiction  of  Augustine.    But  Au- 
gustine was  narrow-minded  and  unconciliatory,  two 
great  faults  in  a  missionary.    He  seems  to  have  dis- 
covered now,  for  the  first  time,  from  Gregory's  letter, 
that  there  was  a  British  Church,  and  that  there  were 
British  bishops  in  Wales ;  and  in  order  to  meet  them, 
he  took  a  journey  to  the  confines  of  that  country. 
A  meeting  took  place  at  St.  Augustine's  Oak,  pro- 
bably situated  on  the  borders  of  Herefordshire  and 
Worcestershire.    We  may  be  sure  it  was  not  without 
some  assurance  of  safe  conduct  from  Ethelbert,  that 
these  British  bishops  were  led  to  cross  the  frontier 
of  the  hated  Saxon,  to  confer  with  an  English  bishop 
owning  a  foreign  jurisdiction.     Augustine  at  once 
charged  them  with  heresy,  and  told  them  they  did 
many  things  against  the  unity  of  the  Church  ;  and 
that  they  must  change  these,  in  order  to  undertake 
with  him  the  conversion  of  the  Gentiles.    Such  an 
abrupt  commencement  was  unlikely  to  lead  to  any 
successful  results.    The  British  bishops  were  as  in- 
tractable as  Augustine,  and  preferred  their  own  tra- 
ditions.   Finding  argument  fail,  Augustine  proposed 
recourse  to  miracle.    A  blind  Saxon  was  introduced, 
whose  sight  the  Britons  in  vain  tried  to  restore  ; 
but  on  the  prayer  of  Augustine  the  blind  man  re- 
covered his  sight,  and  "Augustine  was  by  all  de- 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND. 


69 


clared  the  preacher  of  divine  truth  p."  The  Britons 
requested  a  second  meeting. 

Before  this  was  held,  the  advice  of  a  hermit  was 
asked,  whether  they  should  forsake  their  traditions 
and  yield  to  Augustine.  "  If  he  be  a  man  of  God, 
follow  him,"  was  the  advice  ;  but  how  were  they  to 
know  this.  That  was  no  difficult  matter,  the  hermit 
told  them ;  if  Augustine  shewed  humility,  and  rose  at 
their  approach,  then  he  was  a  man  of  God ;  but  if 
he  continued  sitting,  and  shewed  pride,  he  was  not  so. 
The  story  may  have  some  substratum  of  truth,  but 
it  can  hardly  be  believed  that  so  much  was  made 
to  depend  upon  so  little. 

However,  seven  bishops  assembled  at  the  second 
meeting,  and  together  with  them  many  learned  men, 
chiefly  of  the  monastery  of  Bangor-Iscoed,  with  their 
abbot  Dinooth.  Augustine  addressed  them  in  the 
same  unconciliatory  manner  as  before ;  he  did  not  rise 
to  them ;  he  required  them  to  meet  him  on  three 
points:  (i.)  the  Roman  time  for  observing  Easter; 
(2.)  trine  immersion  and  the  tonsure ;  and  then  (3.) 
to  join  him  in  preaching  to  the  English.  It  must  be 
observed  these  are  matters  of  discipline  only  :  that 
Augustine  charges  the  British  bishops  with  no  differ- 
ence in  doctrine  from  Rome ;  nay,  if  they  had  held 
false  doctrine,  he  would  not  have  asked  them  to  join 
him  in  preaching  to  the  English.   The  British  bishops, 

P  Bede,  B.  ii.  2. 

1  According  to  Welsh  tradition,  "  these  are  the  bishops  who  disputed 
with  Augustine,  the  Bishop  of  the  Saxons,  on  the  banks  of  the  Severn, 
in  the  Forest  of  Dean,  namely:  i.  The  Bishop  of  Caerfawydd,  called 
Hereford;  2.  the  Bishop  of  Teilo,  i.e.  Llandafif;  3.  the  Bishop  of  Llan- 
badarn  Vaur ;  4.  the  Bishop  of  Bangor ;  5.  the  Bishop  of  Llanelwy 
(St.  Asaph) ;  6.  the  Bishop  of  Weeg ;  7.  the  Bishop  of  Morganwg." — 
(Haddan  and  Stubbs,  vol.  iii.  41.) 


70 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


disgusted  with  his  discourtesy,  resolved  through  Di- 
nooth,  whom  they  had  elected  as  their  spokesman, 
that  they  utterly  refused  submission  to  the  Church 
of  Rome,  or  to  Augustine,  as  bishop  over  them ;  they 
owed  brotherly  kindness  and  charity  to  the  Church 
of  God,  and  the  Pope  of  Rome,  and  all  Christians, 
but  other  obedience  they  owed  not  to  him  whom  they 
called  Pope,  for  they  were  under  the  jurisdiction  of 
the  Bishop  of  Caerleon-on-Usk'',  who  was,  under  God, 
their  spiritual  adviser  and  overseer, 

Augustine,  who  had  before  shewn  great  want  of 
discretion,  now  shewed  an  equal  want  of  what  for  mis- 
sion-work is  all  important,  good  temper  and  charity. 
He  left  the  bishops  with  a  prophecy,  or,  as  Bede  calls 
it,  a  threat ;  if  they  would  not  have  peace  with  their 
brethren,  they  should  be  warred  upon  by  their  foes ; 
if  they  would  not  preach  the  way  of  life  to  the  English 
nation,  they  should  suffer  at  their  hands  the  vengeance 
of  death.  "  All  of  which,"  says  Bede,  "  through  the 
dispensation  of  divine  judgment,  fell  out  exactly  as 
he  had  predicted."  Words  spoken  at  random  had 
a  terrible  fulfilment ;  but  of  this  Augustine,  who  had 
been  dead  eight  years  when  it  occurred,  must  have 
been  entirely  innocent.  A  few  years  afterwards,  in 
613,  King  Ethelfrid  was  besieging  Chester.  Seeing 
a  large  body  of  priests  from  the  neighbouring  mo- 
nastery of  Bangor- 1 scoed,  praying  for  the  success  of 
their  countrymen,  he  ordered  his  soldiers  to  attack 
them ;  they  were  put  to  a  dreadful  slaughter,  no 
fewer  than  1,200  of  them  being  killed. 

On  his  return  to  Canterbury,  Augustine  was  able 
to  add  to  the  work  which  he  had  so  successfully 

'  The  Metropolitan  see,  which  had  been  at  Caerleon,  had  been  trans- 
ferred to  St.  David's,  so  that  it  was  called  under  either  title  indifferently. 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND. 


71 


begun.  A  second  see  was  erected  at  Rochester ; 
there  Ethelbert  built  a  church,  which  Augustine,  in 
remembrance  of  his  abbey  at  Rome,  dedicated  to 
St.  Andrew,  and  the  new  see  was  committed  to 
Justus. 

Sebert,  King  of  Essex,  was  the  son  of  Ethelbert's 
sister,  Ricula  ;  him  Augustine  persuaded  to  embrace 
the  faith,  and  MelHtus  was  appointed  Bishop  of  Lon- 
don, the  capital  of  the  kingdom.  Ethelbert,  in  con- 
nection with  Sebert,  built  the  cathedral  of  St.  Paul, 
known  as  East  Minster;  whilst  on  Thorney  Island 
another  cathedral  was  built,  which,  by  way  of  dis- 
tinction, was  called  West  Minster. 

Augustine,  revered  and  beloved  by  his  cotempo- 
raries,  died  a.d.  604,  and  was  buried  in  the  church- 
yard of  his  yet  unfinished  monastery  ^  It  must  be 
confessed  that  he  was  not  a  successful  missionary,  for 
he  was  lacking  in  those  works  which  are  absolutely  in- 
dispensable for  mission-work, — courage,  good  temper, 
discretion,  and  large-heartedness.  Under  specially  fa- 
vourable circumstances,  having  the  soil  well-prepared 
for  him,  he  had  effected  the  conversion  of  the  kingdom 
of  Kent ;  he  had  founded  two  bishoprics  in  that  county ; 
he  had  established  also  the  see  of  London.  This  was 
very  far  from  realising  the  scheme  pointed  out  to  him 
by  St.  Gregory  ;  and  he  had  done  one  irreparable  harm, 
for  he  had  laid  the  foundation  of  a  lasting  enmity 
between  the  British  and  the  Anglo-Saxon  Churches. 
But  we  willingly  acknowledge  a  large  debt  of  grati- 
tude which  England  owes  him ;  he  "  renewed  the 
union  of  the  kingdom,  which  .  .  .  Hengist  had  de- 

•  The  monastery  was  consecrated  by  his  successor,  Lawrence,  who 
transferred  his  remains  to  a  grave  in  the  northern  part  of  the  church ; 
in  1 09 1  his  body  was  removed  to  Canterbury  Cathedral. 


72 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


stroyed.  The  new  England  was  admitted  into  the 
older  Commonwealth  of  nations ;  the  civilization,  arts, 
letters,  which  had  fled  before  the  sword  of  the  Eng- 
lish conquest,  returned  with  the  Christian  Faith 

At  his  death  the  work  of  evangelising  England  (of 
which  he  can  only  be  considered  the  pioneer)  had 
just  begun.  Only  two  kingdoms  of  the  Heptarchy, 
Kent  and  Essex  (these  also  soon  to  relapse  into  pa- 
ganism), had  been  reached  by  his  teaching.  The 
consequences  of  his  failure  were  fatal  to  all  hope  of 
England  being  converted  from  Rome ;  henceforward 
we  shall  find  the  native  Church  was  the  chief  agent 
of  the  work  which  it  had  so  long  and  so  inexcusably 
neglected. 

Before  his  death,  St.  Augustine  had  consecrated 
Lawrence  as  his  successor  in  the  see  of  Canterbury  ^ 
Lawrence  immediately  endeavoured,  but  in  a  more 
conciliatory  spirit  than  Augustine,  to  effect  a  recon- 
ciliation with  the  native  clergy.  In  a  letter  to  the 
bishops  of  Ireland,  he  addresses  them  as  his  "  most 
dear  lords  and  brothers."  He  thought  the  Irish 
would  be  more  amenable  than  the  Welsh  bishops, 
and  so  he  exhorted  them  to  conform  to  the  Catholic 
customs  throughout  the  world ;  but  he  was  doomed 
to  disappointment.  Dagan,  an  Irish  bishop,  who 
had  lately  gone  to  Canterbury  for  the  purpose  of  con- 
ferring with  the  three  English  bishops,  had  been  so 
much  annoyed  with  something  that  had  been  said 

'  Green's  Hist,  of  the  Eng.  People,  i.  42. 

"  Strictly  speaking,  this  was  an  uncanonical  proceeding.  The  eighth 
Canon  of  the  Council  of  Nice  enacted  that  "there  be  not  two  bishops 
in  one  city ;"  and  a  Canon  of  the  Council  of  Antioch,  A.D.  341,  forbade 
a  bishop  consecrating  his  successor.  St.  Augustine  of  Hippo,  for  these 
reasons,  only  nominated,  but  did  not  consecrate,  his  successor. 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND. 


73 


there  (probably  with  regard  to  the  differences  be- 
tween the  two  Churches),  that  he  refused  even  to 
eat  in  the  same  house  with  them  ^. 

We  must  now  give  some  account  of  the  conversion 
of  the  kingdoms  of  the  Saxon  Heptarchy ;  and  this 
will,  perhaps,  be  more  clearly  understood,  if  we  nar- 
rate the  conversion  of  each  kingdom  separately,  in 
the  order  in  which  it  was  effected. 

I.  Kent. — The  kingdom  of  Kent  was  converted, 
as  we  have  seen,  by  St.  Augustine.  After  the  death 
of  Ethelbert,  his  son  and  successor,  Eadbald,  had 
married  his  father's  widow  (for  Bertha,  his  first  wife, 
having  died,  Ethelbert  had  married  a  second  time)  ; 
and  hating  the  restraints  of  a  religion  which  forbad 
such  an  intercourse,  he  renounced  Christianity.  Law- 
rence, the  archbishop,  was  so  discouraged  at  the  ill- 
success  which  had  hitherto  attended  the  Roman  mis- 
sion, that  he  was  about  to  leave  England  in  despair. 
He  was,  however,  prevented  by  a  miracle^  from  carry- 
ing out  his  intention.  The  night  before  his  intended 
departure,  he  ordered  his  bed  to  be  placed  in  the 
church  of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul.  During  the  night  St. 
Peter  appeared  to  him,  and  lacerated  his  back  as  a 
punishment  for  his  cowardice.  The  next  morning 
he  repaired  to  the  king,  and  shewed  him  the  scars 
of  the  stripes  which  he  had  received.  The  king, 
astonished,  asked  who  had  presumed  to  give  stripes 

'  A  similar  complaint  is  made  a  century  later,  in  a  letter  which 
Aldhelm,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Sherborne,  wrote,  by  order  of  a  Saxon 
Synod,  to  Geraint,  a  British  king.  He  complains  that  the  priests  of 
Demetia,  by  which  he  means  South  Wales,  would  not  pray  with  a  Saxon 
in  church,  nor  eat  with  him,  nor  even  give  him  an  ordinary  greeting ; 
but  they  would  throw  to  the  dogs  or  swine  the  remains  of  his  meat,  and 
cleanse  with  sand  or  ashes  the  dishes  or  bowls  which  he  had  used. 
(Bright,  Early  English  Church,  p.  419.)  y  Bede,  B.  ii.  6. 


74 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


to  SO  great  a  man  ^  ?  The  end  was,  that  Eadbald 
was  convinced  by  the  miracle  ;  and,  abjuring  his  idols 
and  his  unlawful  marriage,  he  embraced  the  faith  of 
Christ,  and  did  his  utmost  to  promote  Christianity. 
Thus  Kent  was  reclaimed  to  the  faith. 

2.  Northumbria. — Edwin,  son  of  Ella,  King  of 
Northumbria,  and  Bretwalda,  sought  in  marriage 
Ethelburga,  or  Tata,  the  sister  of  Eadbald  ^  the 
zealous  King  of  Kent.  At  that  time  Edwin  was  a 
pagan,  but  he  agreed  not  only  to  allow  her  the  free- 
dom of  her  religion,  but  to  adopt  it  himself  if  he 
found  it  more  worthy  of  belief  than  his  own.  Ethel- 
burga took  with  her  to  Edwin's  court  Paulinus,  one 
of  the  missionaries  who  had  joined  Augustine  in  6oi, 
and  who  had  been  consecrated  a  bishop  by  Justus, 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  For  some  time  Paulinus 
met  with  but  slight  success  ;  but  on  a  certain  night 
when  Edwin's  life  was  saved  from  an  assassin  sent 
by  Quichelm,  son  of  Cynegils,  sub-king  of  the  West 
Saxons,  it  happened  also  that  Ethelburga  was  safely 
delivered  of  a  daughter.  Edwin,  believing  that  these 
events  were  mainly  owing  to  the  prayers  of  Paulinus, 
allowed  his  daughter  and  eleven  of  his  followers  to 
be  baptized,  and  promised  himself  to  become  a  Chris- 
tian, if  he  should  overcome  his  enemy  who  had  at- 
tempted his  life.  He  gained  a  great  victory,  but  still 
he  hesitated,  probably  from  political  motives.  So  he 
summoned  a  council  of  the  wise  and  chief  men  ( Witan) 
to  Godmundingham,  now  called  Godmanham,  about 
twenty-three  miles  from  York,  to  consult  with  them. 
The  chief  priest,  Coiffi,  was  the  first  to  give  his  opi- 

'  Bede,  B.  ii.  6. 

»  Eadbald  also  had  a  daughter  named  Eanswith,  after  whom  the 
church  which  he  built  at  Folkestone  was  named. 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND. 


75 


nion,  which  was,  that  the  old  religion  contained  nei- 
ther virtue  nor  utility  ;  for  no  man's  worship  had  been 
more  devout  than  his,  and  yet  no  man  had  received 
fewer  benefits  from  it  than  himself    The  advice  next 
given  by  an  aged  thane  offers  an  interesting  picture 
of  the  simplicity  of  the  age  :   "  The  present  life  of 
man,  O  king,  as  compared  to  that  which  is  unknown 
to  us,  is  like  the  swift  flight  of  a  sparrow  through  your 
room  in  winter,  when  there  is  a  good  fire  within,  but 
rain  and  snow  outside.    Whilst  it  is  within  it  is  safe 
from  the  storm,  but  after  a  short  space  it  vanishes 
i^om  your  sight  into  the  dark  winter.    So  is  the  life 
of  man  :  his  existence  is  visible  for  a  short  time,  but 
of  what  went  before,  or  of  what  is  to  follow,  we  are 
entirely  ignorant.    If,  therefore,  this  new  religion  of- 
fers something  more  certain,  it  justly  deserves  to  be 
followed''."    They  then  determined  to  hear  Paulinus, 
whose  address  so  affected  the  assembly,  that  Coiffi 
declared  there  was  no  longer  any  room  for  doubt ; 
he  proposed  that  they  should  renounce  idolatry,  and 
that  he  himself  should  be  allowed  to  profane  the  tem- 
ples of  the  false  gods.    By  his  profession  as  priest  he 
was  forbidden  to  carry  weapons,  and  he  was  only  al- 
lowed to  ride  a  mare.   By  the  king's  permission,  spear 
in  hand,  and  mounted  on  the  king's  charger  (the  people 
the  while  thinking  he  was  mad),  he  thrust  the  spear 
into  the  venerated  temple  of  the  pagan  worship  at 
Godmundingham,  whilst  the  people  set  fire  to  the 
wooden  building  and  the  surrounding  groves.  Edwin, 
having  gone  through  the  training  of  a  catechumen, 
was,  together  with  Osfrid  and  Eadfrid,  his  sons  by 
a  former  wife,  Hilda  his  niece,  and  the  nobility  and 


Bedc,  ii.  13. 


76 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


courtiers,  on  Easter  Eve,  a.d,  627,  baptized  in  St.  Pe- 
ter's Church  at  York.  Here  he  commenced  to  build 
a  noble  church  of  stone  the  site  of  the  present  York 
minster.  Here  Paulinus  became  bishop,  and  is  said 
to  have  met  with  such  success,  that  for  thirty-six  days 
he  was  engaged  in  baptizing  in  the  neighbouring 
rivers,  the  Glen  and  the  Swale  (for  as  yet  there  were 
no  baptisteries),  the  people  who  flocked  to  him.  A 
pall  was  sent  to  him  from  Rome,  but  before  it  arrived 
he  had  ceased  to  be  a  metropolitan. 

The  mission-work  in  Northumbria  was  cut  short. 
Edwin,  together  with  his  son  Osfrid,  was  defeated 
and  slain  in  a  battle  at  Hatfield,  near  Doncaster, 
1  f)  /  9  O  fought  against  Penda,  King  of  Mercia,  for  thirty  years 
•  the  strenuous  enemy  of  Christianity,  and  Cadwallon, 
the  Christian  King  of  Wales'^;  his  whole  army  was 
either  destroyed  or  dispersed,  and  Northumberland 
relapsed  into  paganism.  Paulinus,  together  with  the 
other  missionaries,  and  Queen  Ethelburga,  took  re- 
fuge in  Kent ;  every  vestige  of  Christianity  in  North- 
umbria was  destroyed  ;  Ethelburga  retired  into  a  mo- 
nastery at  Lyminge,  and  was  afterwards  revered  as 
a  saint ;  Paulinus  accepted  the  vacant  bishopric  of 
Rochester,  and  York  remained  without  a  metropoli- 
tan till  the  primacy  of  Archbishop  Egbert  in  the 
eighth  century.  One  person  alone  had  the  courage 
to  remain,  James,  or  Jacob,  "the  deacon,"  otherwise 
known  as  the  "  Chanter,"  from  his  knowledge  of 

'  Parts  of  this  edifice  were  discovered  under  the  choir  of  the  present 
minster,  when  it  was  lately  under  repair. 

*  This  is  an  instance  of  the  bitter  enmity  between  the  Britons  and 
Saxons.  Cadwallon  was  a  Christian,  but  he  preferred  joining  Penda, 
the  most  inveterate  enemy  of  Christianity,  rather  than  the  Saxons,  his 
fellow-Christians. 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND. 


77 


Church  music  ;  he  continued  still  to  preach,  and  the 
scene  of  his  labours  was  called  Akeburg,  or  "  Jacob's 
Town,"  near  Richmond. 

What  would  St  Gregory  have  thought,  if  he  had 
lived  to  witness  the  faint-heartedness  of  his  mission- 
aries ?  To  each  of  the  first  four  Archbishops  of  Can- 
terbury,— all  of  them  Italians,  all  of  them  appointed 
by  Gregory, — attaches  the  stigma  of  cowardice.  St. 
Augustine  was  for  turning  back  at  Lerins  ;  Lawrence, 
his  successor,  was  once  on  the  very  point  of  leaving 
the  kingdom  ;  Mellitus,  the  third,  and  with  him  Jus- 
tus, the  fourth.  Archbishop,  when  respectively  Bishop 
of  London  and  Rochester,  actually  fled  the  kingdom 
from  the  sons  of  Sebert.  And  now  the  same  tale  is 
told  of  Paulinus, — truly  the  missionaries  of  St.  Gre- 
gory were  not  ambitious  of  the  martyr's  crown  !  The 
conversion  of  Northumbria,  so  earnestly  commenced, 
so  feebly  relinquished  by  Paulinus,  must  be  accom- 
plished by  other  missionaries. 

Edwin's  cousins,  Osric  and  Eanfrid — both  of  them 
at  the  time  Christians,  but  both  of  whom,  under  fear 
of  Penda,  relapsed  into  paganism — succeeded  him, 
the  one  in  Deira,  the  other  in  Bernicia.  Their  reign 
was,  hov/ever,  short ;  and  next  came  Oswald,  a  younger 
brother  of  Eanfrid,  who  was  afterwards  honoured  as 
St.  Oswald,  as  King  of  the  whole  of  Northumbria  : 
he,  having  gained  a  great  victory,  a.d.  634,  in  the 
battle  of  Heavenfield,  near  Hexham,  at  which  he 
took  the  holy  Rood  as  his  banner,  and  having  slain 
Cadwallon,  regained  all  the  power  of  Edwin,  and  the 
tide  of  Bretwalda. 

Oswald's  first  idea  was  to  restore  Christianity. 
Having  in  his  youth  found  refuge  in  the  monastery 
of  lona,  he  was  indebted  to  it  for  his  conversion,  so 


78 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH, 


he  naturally  applied  there  for  a  bishop.  Colman,  the 
first  missioner  sent,  was  a  man  of  stern  and  unbend- 
ing character,  and  returned  without  success,  which 
he  said  was  impossible  amongst  a  people  so  rude 
and  stubborn.  Aidan  a  brother  in  the  monastery, 
asked  Colman  whether  it  might  not  be  his  own 
severity,  rather  than  their  stubbornness,  which  was 
at  fault ;  had  he  given  them,  as  the  Bible  enjoined, 
the  milk  first,  before  the  strong  meat  ?  The  end  was 
that  Aidan  was  chosen  as  the  best  fitted  to  under- 
take the  mission,  and  being  ordained  bishop,  he  suc- 
ceeded Paulinus,  a.d.  635.  But  he  was  unwilling  to 
fix  his  see  at  York,  the  ancient  seat  of  the  episcopate ; 
whether  this  was  from  a  wish  to  have  no  connexion 
with  the  Roman  Church,  or  from  a  love  of  the  se- 
clusion to  which  he  had  been  accustomed  at  lona, 
is  doubtful ;  but,  without  seeking  the  sanction  of  Can- 
terbury or  Rome,  he  transferred  the  see  to  Lindis- 
farne  or  Holy  Isle,  on  the  coast  of  Northumberland, 
whither  he  was  followed  by  a  large  number  of  Scot- 
tish missionaries.  From  Lindisfarne  missionaries 
went  forth  amongst  the  peasants  of  Yorkshire  and 
Northumbria,  under  Aidan's  direction,  he  himself 
travelling  on  foot,  and  setting  an  example  of  fru- 
gality and  self-denial ;  with  him  travelled  the  king, 
w^ho,  as  Aidan  was  unacquainted  with  the  Saxon 
language,  acted  as  interpreter,  a  sight  which  Bede 
might  well  call  "  beautiful."  Aidan  formed  a  school 
of  twelve  English  boys,  amongst  them  the  famous 
Chad,  whom  he  trained  for  mission-work  in  their 
own  country ;  monasteries  and  churches  were  built 

^  Bede  (iii.  3)  says  of  him  that  he  obsen-ed  Easter  after  the  British 
manner ;  yet  he  cannot  withhold  his  admiration  "  of  a  man  of  the  great- 
est gentleness,  piety,  and  moderation." 


• 

THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND. 


79 


by  the  king's  bounty,  and  established  on  the  system 
of  lona ;  the  missionaries  were  instant  in  works  of 
charity ;  whatever  money  was  given  them,  was  either 
devoted  to  the  poor,  or  to  redeeming  slaves,  whom 
Aidan  instructed  and  converted  to  Christianity,  and 
many  of  whom  he  ordained  as  priests. 

Thus  was  the  Northumbrian  Church  founded,  and 
rooted  in  the  faith.  But  a  great  calamity  now  befel 
it,  for  the  good  King  Oswald  was,  at  the  age  of 
thirty-eight,  slain  in  battle  at  Maserfield,  near  the 
town  which  after  him  is  called  Oswestry,  by  that 
foe  to  Christianity,  Penda.  He  died  as  he  had  lived. 
Bede  tells  us  "he  ended  his  life  in  prayer;"  when 
beset  by  his  enemies,  and  he  saw  he  must  die,  he 
prayed  for  the  souls  of  his  army ;  "  Lord,  have  mercy 
on  their  souls,"  said  Oswald,  as  he  fell  to  the  ground  ^ 
The  ferocious  Penda  exposed  his  head  and  arms  on 
wooden  stakes ;  but  they  were  rescued  the  next  year, 
and  the  head  buried  by  Aidan  at  Lindisfarne,  whence 
it  was  removed,  a.d.  875,  within  the  coffin  of  St.  Cuth- 
bert.  William  of  Malmesbury  tells  us,  that  when  the 
tomb  of  Cuthbert,  in  Durham  Cathedral,  was  opened, 
A.D.  1 104,  the  head  of  Oswald,  king  and  martyr,  was 
found  between  his  arms ;  hence  the  common  repre- 
sentation of  that  saint,  holding  the  head  of  Oswald  in 
his  hands. 

Oswald  was  succeeded  by  his  brother  Oswy,  then 
about  thirty  years  of  age,  who  married  Eanfleda, 
daughter  of  Edwin  and  Ethelburga.  On  his  way  to 
that  battle  in  which  he  slew  Penda,  Oswy,  whose 
religion  was  strongly  tainted  with  superstition,  vowed 
that  if  he  were  successful,  he  would  dedicate  to  God 
his  daughter  Elfleda,  then  a  baby  of  a  year  old,  and 

'  Bede,  iii,  12. 


.  J8o    ^  y         THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH.  ' 

/  found  twelve  monastenes.  Havingf  defeated  and  slain 
Penda,  he  at  once  fulfilled  his  vow  ;  he  built  the  mo- 
nasteries,  and  he  placed  his  daughter  in  the  monastery 
of  Hartlepool,  of  which  Hilda  was  abbess.  Hilda, 
who  was  a  person  of  great  ability  and  piety,  was 
daughter  of  Heneric,  nephew  of  Edwin,  and  had  be- 
come a  recluse  by  the  advice  of  St.  Aidan.  Two 
years  afterwards,  a.d.  657,  Hilda  built  the  famous 
double  monastery,  one  part  being  for  monks,  and 
the  other  for  nuns,  at  Strenseshalch,  "  the  bay  of  the 
light-house,"  since  known  as  Whitby,  whither  she  and 
her  nuns  removed,  and  in  which,  after  her  death, 
a.d.  680,  Elfleda  succeeded  her  as  abbess^. 

Such  was  the  state  of"  affairs  in  Northumbria,  when 
the  disputes  between  the  British  and  Roman  party, 
as  to  the  observance  of  Easter,  were  brought  to  an 
end  in  the  followinof  manner. 

Oswy's  wife,  Eanfleda,  had  derived  from  her 
mother,  Ethelburga,  a  strong  preference  for  the 
Roman,  whilst  her  husband  continued  firm  to  the 
British  customs  ;  although,  at  the  same  time,  he 
allowed  her  to  appoint  Wilfrid,  a  young  Northum- 
brian priest,  and  a  firm  adherent  to  Rome,  tutor  to 
their  son.  There  was  thus  a  manifest  difference  at 
Court  in  the  observance  of  Easter,  for  whilst  one 
party  was  enjoying  its  festivities,  the  other  was  ob- 
serving the  austerities  of  Lent.  Aidan,  having  died 
a.d.  651,  had  been  succeeded  by  Phinan,  another 
monk  of  lona;  and  now  Colman,  also  from  lona, 
was   Bishop,   and  therefore  the  British  party  was 

«  Such  was  the  repute  in  which  the  monaster)'  was  held,  that  five 
of  its  monks  became  bishops ;  but  it  is  especially  famous  as  the  abode 
of  our  earliest  Christian  poet,  Csedmon,  who  was  a  ser\'ant  in  the 
monastery. 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND. 


8i 


in  the  ascendant.  But  the  king  was  determined  to 
have  the  matter  of  the  different  observance  of  Easter 
settled,  and  for  this  purpose  he  held  a  famous  Council, 
in  664,  in  the  new  monastery  of  Whitby,  at  which 
Bishop  Colman,  and  Cedd,  Bishop  of  Essex,  conducted 
the  British,  and  Agilbert,  Bishop  of  Dorchester,  and 
Wilfrid,  the  Roman  cause.  The  British  party  re- 
ferred their  custom  to  St.  John,  the  Roman  to  St. 
Peter,  to  whom  Christ  had  given  the  keys  of  heaven. 
"  Were  the  keys  of  heaven  given  to  St.  Peter  ?"  the 
King  asked.  "  Certainly,"  was  the  answer.  Turning 
to  the  British  party,  "  Can  you  claim  such  a  privilege 
for  your  custom?"  asked  the  king.  "We  cannot," 
Colman  replied.  "  I  cannot,  therefore,"  decided  the 
king,  "  disoblige  him  who  keeps  the  keys  of  heaven, 
lest,  when  I  seek  admission,  he  may  refuse  to  open." 

Thus  was  the  case  finished,  and  the  ancient  cus- 
toms of  the  Britons  were  renounced  ^.  There  can  be 
no  doubt  Oswy  had  been  influenced  by  his  wife ;  but 
to  this  absurd  termination  of  the  synod,  Rome  owes 
one  of  her  most  important  triumphs.  It  must  be  al- 
lowed that  the  proper  method  of  computing  Easter 
had  been  adopted  ;  but  it  was  at  a  great  cost.  Cedd, 
indeed,  abandoned  the  British  usages ;  but  to  Colman 
the  matter  was  too  important  to  be  thus  solved ;  he 
could  not  so  easily  abandon  the  principles  of  his 
Church,  so  he  resigned  his  bishopric,  and  taking  with 
him  the  greater  part  of  his  Scottish  monks  and  clergy, 
sailed  back  to  lona.    The  long  contest  between  the 

The  Southern  Irish  adopted  the  Roman  mode  of  calculating  Easter 
about  A.D.  634;  the  North  of  Ireland,  A.D.  704,  Hy,  716  ;  the  Welsh  did 
not  yield  till  after  Bede's  death ;  the  North  Welsh,  under  the  influence 
of  Elbod,  Bishop  of  Bangor,  in  755  or  768 ;  the  South  Welsh,  under 
strong  pressure,  in  777.    (Bright,  99.) 

G. 


82 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


British  and  Roman  Churches  was  settled  in  North- 
umbria  ;  the  native  Church  had  Christianized  the  coun- 
try, and  Rome  entered  into  the  fruits  of  its  labours. 
Tuda,  who  had  been  consecrated  bishop  in  Ireland, 
adopted  the  Roman  usages,  and  became  first  Roman 
Bishop  of  Lindisfarne  ;  but,  dying  shortly  afterwards, 
was  succeeded  by  Wilfrid. 

Of  this  wonderful  man,  of  whom  mention  has  al- 
ready more  than  once  been  made,  "  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  men  of  the  day"  (or,  it  might  be  added, 
any  other  day),  "  right-hearted,  wrong-headed,  full  of 
genius,  but  defective  in  judgment',"  some  account 
must  now  be  given. 

Wilfrid,  the  son  of  a  Thane  in  Bernicia,  was  born 
A.D.  634.  Being  driven  from  home  at  the  age  of  four- 
teen by  the  ill-treatment  of  a  step-mother,  he  was 
appointed,  through  the  influence  of  Queen  Eanfleda, 
the  wife  of  Oswy,  to  an  office  in  the  monastery  of 
Lindisfarne.  There  he  lived  for  some  time  under  the 
management  of  the  Scottish  monks,  and  would  natu- 
rally acquire  the  British  views  of  Church  discipline. 
To  counteract  this,  the  queen,  who  had  become  his 
patroness,  sent  him  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  in  the 
company  of  Benedict  Biscop  ^  to  Rome,  where,  under 
the  tuition  of  Archdeacon  Boniface,  he  acquired  a  taste 
for  everything  Roman,  and  a  contempt  for  everything 
British.  At  the  end  of  a.d.  658  he  returned  to  Eng- 
land, and  became  abbot  of  the  monastery  at  Ripon. 
At  the  age  of  thirty  he  attended  the  Council  of  Whitby, 
and  shortly  afterwards  was  appointed  to  succeed  Tuda 
in  the  see  of  Lindisfarne;  but  being  unwilling^  to  be 

'  Hook,  i.  137.  An  account  of  Benedict  Biscop  will  be  found 

in  the  succeeding  chapter. 

'  He  was  unwilling  to  be  consecrated  by  "  Prelates  not  in  connection 
with  Rome,  or  those  who  agree  with  schismatics  {qui  schisniaticis  consen- 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND. 


83 


consecrated  by  British  bishops,  he  went  to  Compiegne, 
and  was  consecrated,  a.d.  665,  by  his  friend  Agilbert, 
the  ex- Bishop  of  Dorchester,  who  was  at  the  time 
Archbishop  of  Paris.  He  also,  from  a  dislike  of  its 
Scottish  foundation,  transferred  the  see  of  Lindisfarne 
to  York. 

The  ceremony  of  his  consecration  as  bishop  was 
performed  with  great  pomp;  seated  on  a  chair"  of 
gold  borne  by  twelve  bishops,  he  was  carried  to  the 
altar  of  his  consecration  ;  and  altogether  he  was  treated 
with  so  great  honour  and  respect  in  France,  that  he 
was  tempted  to  prolong  his  stay  in  that  country  till 
the  spring  of  the  following  year.  But  the  contempt 
with  which  he  had  treated  the  English  Church,  and 
his  long  delay  in  returning  to  his  diocese,  so  offended 
King  Oswy,  that  he  in  consequence  deposed  him  from 
his  bishopric,  and  appointed  Chad,  Abbot  of  Lasting- 
ham,  and  brother  of  Bishop  Cedd,  in  his  place.  We 
shall  soon  hear  more  of  Wilfrid,  and  can  now  return 
to  the  conversion  of  England. 

3.  East  Anglia. — Redwald,  King  of  East  Anglia, 
had  been  persuaded  by  Ethelbert,  King  of  Kent,  to 
receive  baptism  ;  but,  under  the  influence  of  his  wife, 
he  had  grown  lukewarm.  In  the  same  temple  he 
kept  two  altars,  one  for  Christian,  the  other  for  hea- 
then worship,  thus  trying  to  associate  the  two  rites. 

Hunt)." — (Eddius.)  Bright,  however,  says  that  the  canonical  number  of 
three  consecrating  bishops  could  not  be  found  in  England.  Deusdedit, 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  Damianus,  Bishop  of  Rochester,  had 
died  of  the  plague,  at  that  time  devastating  Europe.  Cedd  was  still  alive, 
but  against  him  there  would  be  the  objection  of  his  Scotch  consecration  ; 
there  would  be  the  same  objection  against  Jaruman,  Bishop  of  Mercia ; 
Wini,  of  Winchester,  would  be  objected  to,  as  having  supplanted 
Agilbert.  There  therefore  only  remained  one  bishop,  Boniface  of 
Dunwich. 

G  2 


84 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


His  son,  Eorpwald,  was  persuaded  by  Edwin,  King 
of  Northumbria,  to  embrace  the  faith  ;  but  pagan  an- 
tipathy, which  could  tolerate  the  lukewarmness  of 
Redwald,  was  fiercely  excited  against  the  more  reso- 
lute Christianity  of  Eorpwald,  so  he  was  assassinated 
by  one  named  Ricbert  in  628,  the  year  of  his  con- 
version. For  three  years  the  country  was  again  hea- 
then, when  Sigebert,  Eorpwald's  half-brother,  who 
had  been  driven  by  his  step-father  Redwald  into  Gaul, 
and  had  there  been  converted,  "  thoroughly  Christian 
and  very  learned,  a  good  man  and  religious,"  as  Bede 
calls  him,  became  king.  Sigebert  set  himself  to  the 
completion  of  the  work  begun  by  his  brother,  and 
selected  a  Burgundian,  named  in  Saxon  Bertgils,  but 
in  Italian  Felix"",  who  was  recommended  to  him  by 
Archbishop  Honorius",  to  preach  to  his  people;  and 
he,  fixing  his  see  at  Dunwich  °,  on  the  Suffolk  coast, 
held  his  bishopric  for  seventeen  years.  In  no  king- 
dom did  Christianity  take  root  more  firmly  or  more 
permanently  than  in  East  Anglia.  Sigebert,  probably 
at  the  instigation  of  Fursey'',  an  Irish  monk,  who  had 
lately  come  over  to  East  Anglia,  resigned  his  kingdom 
for  a  monastery  on  the  site  of  the  present  Bury  St.  Ed- 
mund's, which  may  be  taken  as  a  proof  of  the  depth 
of  his  convictions,  and  accounts  for  the  firm  root  which 
Christianity  took  in  his  country. 

"  His  name  is  still  preserved  in  the  Suffolk  village,  Felixstowe. 

"  But  in  the  mission  to  East  Anglia  there  was  no  acknowledgment  of 
the  metropolitan  authority  of  Honorius.    (Hook,  i.  113.) 

°  Theodore  divided  the  diocese,  creating  a  new  bishopric  at  Elmham  ; 
the  East  Anglian  bishopric  was  transferred  to  Thetford  a.d.  1075,  and  to 
Norwich  A.D.  1094. 

p  Fursey  was  an  object  of  especial  dislike  at  Canterbury,  because  he 
cut  his  hair,  as  it  was  said,  after  the  fashion  of  Simon  Magus.  (Hook, 
i.  113.) 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND. 


85 


4.  Wessex. — The  conversion  of  Wessex  was  never 
undertaken  by  the  early  Roman  missionaries ;  diffi- 
culties standing  in  the  way,  with  which  the  faint- 
hearted Italians  were  unwilling  to  cope.     In  633, 
Pope  Honorius  sent  over  to  England,  Birinus,  a  Gaul- 
ish monk,  who  was  consecrated  a  missionary  bishop 
by  Asterius,  Bishop  of  Milan,  residing  at  Genoa. 
Landing  in  Hampshire,  he  found  the  kingdom  of 
Wessex   sunk   in   the   deepest  paganism ;   but  he 
preached  there  with  so  great  success,  that  he  soon 
touched  the  heart  of  the  king,  Cynegils.    His  success, 
however,  was  greatly  due  to  Oswald,  King  of  North- 
umbria,  who  was  engaged  to  marry  Cynegils'  daughter, 
at  whose  court  he  was  staying  at  the  same  time  as 
Birinus  ;   Cynegils  was  baptized  at  Dorchester,  near 
Oxford,  Oswald  standing  as  his  godfather.     Of  the 
new  see  of  Dorchester  Birinus  was  appointed  bishop, 
and  was  succeeded  in  the  see  by  a  Frenchman  named 
Agilbert.     Quichelm,  the  son  of  Cynegils,  who,  ten 
years  before,  had  sent  Eomer  with  the  poisoned  dagger 
to  kill  Edwin,  followed  his  father's  example  ;  but  the 
same  year  that  witnessed  his  baptism,  witnessed  also 
his  death,  and  the  crown  passed  to  his  younger  bro- 
ther, Coinwalch,  who  was  at  the  time  a  heathen,  but 
soon  became  converted,  and  founded  the  see  and  built 
the  cathedral  church  of  Winchester.    To  this  new  see 
of  Winchester,  Wini,  a  native  of  the  country,  but  who 
was  consecrated  in  France,  was  appointed  the  first 
bishop ;  but  to  the  appointment  of  a  second  bishop 
in  the  kingdom  of  Wessex,  Agilbert,  Bishop  of  Dor- 
chester, took  offence,  so,  resigning  his  see,  he  retired 
to  France,  where  he  became  Archbishop  of  Paris. 

5.  Essex. — Sebert,  King  of  Essex,  and  nephew  of 
Ethelbert,  had,  as  we  have  seen,  followed  Ethelbert's, 


86 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


example,  and  embraced  Christianity  at  the  hands  of 
the  Roman  missionaries,  MelHtus  being  appointed 
Bishop  of  London,  the  capital  of  his  kingdom.  But 
he  was  succeeded  by  his  three  sons,  who  were  pagans  ; 
and  under  them  the  kingdom  entirely  relapsed  into 
idolatry.  Whilst  Mellitus  was  celebrating  Mass,  these 
three  men,  bursting  into  the  church,  demanded  of  him 
some  of  the  Eucharistic  Bread,  such  as  he  had  given 
to  their  father.  "  You  must  first  be  baptized,"  was 
the  answer  of  Mellitus  ;  "  the  Bread  of  Life  is  reserved 
for  those  who  have  received  the  laver  of  life."  Upon 
this  Mellitus  was  expelled  the  kingdom,  and  paganism 
again  introduced.  Mellitus,  with  Justus,  Bishop  of 
Rochester,  having  consulted  with  Lawrence,  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  left  the  country  ;  Justus  after- 
wards returned  to  the  see  of  Rochester,  but  the  people 
of  Essex  preferred  to  live  in  their  idolatry,  and  refused 
to  receive  back  Mellitus  "i.  About  a.d.  653,  Sigebert, 
King  of  Essex,  afterwards  named  the  Good,  between 
whom  and  Oswy,  King  of  Northumbria,  a  strong 
friendship  existed,  on  one  of  his  frequent  visits  to 
Oswy  was  convinced  of  the  truth  of  Christianity,  and 
baptized  at  the  same  time  as  Peada  by  Phinan,  Bishop 
of  Lindisfarne.  On  Sig^ebert  asking  for  some  Chris- 
tian  teachers  to  instruct  his  people,  Oswy  sent  Cedd 
from  Mercia,  and  him  Phinan,  himself  a  staunch  ad- 
herent of  British  customs,  having  called  in  two  other 
British  bishops  to  assist  him,  consecrated  as  bishop 
for  the  East  Saxons. 

St.  Gregoty's  plan  was  to  have  established  the  southern  archbishopric, 
not  at  Canterbury,  but  London.  The  political  dependence  of  London  on 
Canterbury  prevented  this  being  done  upon  Augustine's  death,  and  the 
apostacy  of  the  Londoners  hindered  it  henceforward.  (Haddan  and 
Stubbs,  iii.  67.) 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND. 


87 


6.  Mercia. — Peada,  the  son  of  that  inveterate  Chris- 
tian -  hater,  Penda,  '"'  an  excellent  youth,  and  much 
worthy  of  the  title  and  person  of  king"","  sought  in 
marriage  Atheleda,  the  daughter  of  Oswy,  who  re- 
fused to  give  her  to  him  except  on  his  becoming  a 
Christian.  He  was  also  frequently  persuaded  to  em- 
brace Christianity  by  Oswy's  son,  Alfrid,  who  had 
married  his  sister  Cyneburga.  Peada,  when  he  heard 
the  Gospel  preached,  was  so  struck  with  the  "  promise 
of  the  heavenly  kingdom,  and  the  hope  of  resurrection 
and  future  immortality,  that  he  declared  he  would 
willingly  become  a  Christian,  even  though  he  should 
be  refused  the  virgin  ^"  and  was  baptized  by  Phinan. 
Phinan  then,  a.d.  656,  consecrated  Diuma,  an  Irish- 
man, as  bishop,  and  sent  him  with  three  Saxon  priests, 
one  of  whom  was  Cedd,  afterwards  Bishop  of  London, 
to  evangelize  the  Mercian  kingdom.  Diuma  first 
placed  his  see  at  Repton,  but  afterwards  transferred 
it  to  Lichfield,  the  capital  of  the  kingdom ;  his  three 
successors  in  the  see  were  all  selected  from  the  native 
clergy,  and  under  these  four  prelates  all  the  midland 
counties  were  converted.  Immediately  after  the  con- 
secration of  Diuma,  Oswy  and  Peada  are  said  to  have 
begun  to  build  a  monastery  to  the  glory  of  Christ  and 
St.  Peter  at  a  place  called  Medeshamstede,  "the  dwell- 
ing-place of  the  meadows,"  which  in  the  tenth  century 
acquired  the  name  of  St.  Peter's  Borough.  But  Peada 
could  do  little  more  than  lay  the  foundation,  for  in 
the  same  year,  or  the  beginning  of  the  next,  he  was 
murdered,  by  the  treachery,  it  is  said,  of  his  wife,  the 
Christian  princess  of  Northumbria. 

7.  Sussex. — The  last  converted  of  the  kingdoms 
of  the  Heptarchy  was  Sussex  ;  yet  it  is  surprising  that 

'  Bede,  iii.  21.  '  Ibid. 


88 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


no  attempt  at  its  conversion  had  been  made  by  the 
Roman  missionaries,  Sussex  being  the  nearest  king- 
dom to  Kent.  A  small  monastery  appears,  indeed, 
to  have  been  established  at  Bosham  by  a  Scottish 
monk,  but  it  made  no  impression  upon  the  surround- 
ing country,  and  the  services  were  unattended  except 
by  the  inmates.  By  chance,  it  would  almost  seem, 
Wilfrid  came  into  the  country.  We  parted  with  Wil- 
frid when  he  was  deposed  for  the  first  time  from  his 
bishopric  by  King  Oswy  ;  in  the  next  chapter  we 
shall  find  him  reinstated,  but  again  getting  into  trouble, 
and  again  deposed.  It  was  after  this  second  dismissal 
from  York  that,  being  under  the  ban  of  his  own  king, 
he  found  protection,  a.d.  68 i,  in  Sussex,  at  the  hands 
of  the  king,  -^dilwalch,  who  shortly  before  had  been 
baptized  in  Mercia  by  persuasion  of  the  king,  Wulf- 
here.  Wilfrid  "  could  not,"  as  Bede  tells  us,  "  be  re- 
strained from  preaching  the  Gospel',"  so  he  adminis- 
tered to  the  West  Saxons  the  word  of  faith  and  the 
baptism  of  salvation.  No  rain,  it  was  said,  had  fallen 
in  the  country  for  three  years  ;  a  sore  famine  was  the 
consequence,  so  that  the  people,  driven  to  despair, 
would  in  companies  of  forty  and  fifty,  hand  in  hand, 
throw  themselves  from  the  precipices  into  the  sea. 
Though  the  sea  and  rivers  abounded  in  fish,  the  peo- 
ple were  so  barbarous  as  to  be  ignorant  of  fishing. 
Wilfrid  taught  them  the  art,  and  presently  they  took 
three  hundred  fish  of  different  kinds.  In  this  manner 
he  gained  the  affections  of  the  people,  who  were  the 
more  ready  to  listen  to  his  preaching.  He  spent  some 
months  in  instructing  them  ;  the  ealdormen  and  thanes 
set  the  example,  which  the  rest  of  the  people  followed, 
of  receiving  baptism  ;  and  on  that  very  day  "  there 

*  Bede,  iv.  13. 


THE  CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND. 


89 


fell  a  soft  but  plentiful  rain  ;  the  earth  revived  again, 
and  the  verdure  being  restored  to  the  fields,  the  sea- 
son was  pleasant  and  fruitful  The  king  gave  him 
the  Isle  of  Selsey,  which  remained  a  bishop's  see  till 
it  was  transferred  to  Chichester ;  here  Wilfrid  founded 
a  monastery,  and  performed  the  duties  of  a  bishop  for 
five  years. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  how  by  far  the  larger  portion 
of  England  owed  its  conversion  to  native  rather  than 
Roman  missionaries.  Let  us  briefly  summarise  what 
has  been  said.  Kent  was  converted  to  Christianity 
by  the  Roman  missionaries,  a.d.  597  ;  Northumbria, 
under  Scottish  missionaries,  in  635  ;  East  Anglia, 
under  a  Burgundian  named  in  Saxon  Bertgils,  and 
in  Italian  Felix,  in  631  ;  Wessex,  under  Birinus,  a 
Gaulish  monk,  who  was  sent  into  the  country  by  Pope 
Honorius,  in  633  ;  Essex,  under  Cedd,  who  was  con- 
secrated by  Phinan,  the  successor  of  St.  Aidan,  in  653  ; 
Mercia,  under  the  Scots,  653  ;  Sussex,  under  Wil- 
frid, 681. 

It  is  interesting  to  notice  the  prominent  part  which 
the  sovereigns  of  the  country  bore  in  evangelizing 
their  kingdoms,  in  which  respect  the  names  of  Ethel- 
bert,  Edwin,  Oswald,  Oswy,  and  the  two  Sigeberts 
stand  conspicuous.  Under  such  leaders,  we  can  little 
wonder  that  the  native  missionaries  met  with  such 
eminent  success.  And  they  were  themselves  men 
especially  fitted  for  the  work  of  evangelizing  heathen 
countries.  Their  whole  life  was  spent  in  self-denial, 
in  preaching,  baptizing,  visiting  the  sick,  and  taking 
the  charge  of  souls.  Their  frugal  habits,  and  their 
abstinence  from  all  worldly  indulgences,  had  already 
gained  for  their  monastery  the  name  of  Holy  Island. 

"  Bede,'iv.  13.] 


90 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


Money  they  had  none,  it  all  went  to  the  poor.  If  the 
king  visited  them,  he  fared  no  better  than  the  rest. 
The  poor  from  the  neighbouring  villages  would  flock 
in  crowds  to  their  churches  on  Sundays.  If  one  of 
the  missionaries  passed  through  their  villages,  the 
poor  people  would  gather  round  him,  seeking  an  ex- 
hortation from  the  word  of  life,  asking  him  to  sign 
their  foreheads  with  the  sign  of  the  cross,  and  to  give 
them  his  blessing.  They  knew  how  to  sympathise 
with  the  poor,  and  so  the  poor  loved  those  humble 
and  earnest  men,  and  were  so  induced  to  listen  to 
their  words.  This  was  the  secret  of  the  success  of 
the  British  missionaries ;  and  the  want  of  this  sym- 
pathy is  the  secret  of  the  failure  of  St.  Augustine,  and 
of  the  missionaries  sent  from  Rome. 


CHAPTER  II. 


FROM  ARCHBISHOP  THEODORE  TO  THE 
LICHFIELD  ARCHBISHOPRIC. 

HE  four  successors  of  St.  Augustine  were  Italians. 


Next  to  Augustine  came  Lawrence,  then  Mellitus, 
then  Justus,  during  whose  primacy  Northumbria  was 
converted,  and  the  see  of  York  estabHshed ;  next 
came  Honorius,  who  lived  to  see  Northumbria  lost 
under  Paulinus,  and  churches  springing  up  on  all 
sides  disowning  the  primacy  of  Canterbury.  After 
these  Italians  followed  a  Saxon  archbishop,  Frithona, 
who  assumed  the  name  of  Deusdedit,  in  whose  pri- 
macy the  Council  of  Whitby  was  held  :  then  followed 
an  interregnum  of  three  years. 

It  might  have  been  expected  that  Wilfrid  would 
have  then  been  appointed  to  the  primacy ;  but  able 
as  he  was,  there  were  in  his  case  some  insurmountable 
difficulties.  In  the  first  place  he  was  a  thorough  par- 
tizan  of  Rome,  and  in  the  next,  he  never  concealed 
his  contempt  for  the  British  Church.  It  was  evident 
that  the  British  bishops  would  never  accept  him  as 
their  metropolitan. 

But  after  the  see  had  been  vacant  three  years,  the 
two  most  powerful  kings — Oswy  of  Northumbria,  and 
Egbert  of  Kent — selected,  "with  the  consent  of  the 
holy  Church  of  the  nation  of  the  English  ^"  Wigheard, 
a  Kentish  priest ;  and  as  there  was  no  metropoli- 
tan in  England,  and  no  consecrating  bishops  could 
be  found  who  would  not  offend  one  party  or  the 
other,  they  sent  him  to  Rome  to  be  consecrated  by 


*  Bede,  iii.  29. 


92 


FROM  ARCHBISHOP  THEODORE  TO 


Pope  Vitalian^.  Wigheard  died  of  the  pestilence  then 
raging  in  Rome  before  he  was  consecrated,  and  as  the 
see  of  Canterbury  had  been  so  long  vacant,  the  two 
kings  asked  Vital ian  to  appoint  the  archbishop,  and 
his  choice "  fell  upon  Adrian,  an  African  and  a  monk. 
Adrian  refused  the  archbishopric  for  himself,  but  re- 
commended Theodore,  a  Greek,  who  was  at  the  time 
resident  at  Rome ;  a  strong,  hale  old  man,  although  he 
was  sixty-six  years  of  age.  Vitalian  approved  of  the 
recommendation  ;  but,  knowing  that  the  British  Church 
prided  itself  on  its  adherence  to  the  Greek  and  not 
the  Roman  Church,  having  reason  also  to  fear  that  the 
orthodoxy  of  Theodore  might  be  somewhat  tainted 
with  the  Monothelite  heresy  at  that  time  prevalent  in 
the  East,  he  stipulated  that  Adrian  should  accompany 
him  into  England^. 

Theodore  was  not  yet  in  holy  orders ;  he  had, 
therefore,  to  go  through  the  different  grades  from 
the  sub-diaconate.  Then,  as  he  had  received  the 
Greek  tonsure,  he  had  to  wait  four  months  longer, 
till  his  hair  grew  long  enough  to  receive  the  Roman 
tonsure.  He  started  with  Adrian  and  Benedict  Biscop 
in  March,  668  ;  but  he  did  not  reach  England  till 
May,  669.  Adrian  was  detained  in  France  two  years 
longer,  during  which  time  the  abbacy  of  SS.  Peter  and 
Paul,  which  Theodore  afterwards  gave  him,  was  held 
by  Benedict  Biscop. 

The  same  course  was  taken  in  the  case  of  Theodore's  successor, 
Brightwald,  who  went  to  France  to  be  consecrated. 

'  Others  take  a  different  view  of  the  Pope's  conduct.  "  The  death  of 
Wigheard  .  .  .  was  taken  advantage  of  by  the  Pope,  to  set  over  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  bishops  a  primate  devoted  to  his  views." — (Lappenberg,  Ang.-Sax. 
Kings,  i.  172.)  "  The  opportunity  was  not  lost  upon  Italian  subtlety." — 
(Soames,  Ang.-Sax.  Church,  p.  78.) 

■*  Bede,  iv.  i. 


THE  LICHFIELD  ARCHBISHOrRIC. 


93 


A  better  appointment  than  that  of  Theodore  could 
not  have  been  made.  What  was  wanting  in  England 
was  a  system ;  hitherto  the  Church  of  England  had 
been  little  more  than  a  missionary  Church,  divided 
between  two  opposing  parties,  the  Roman  and  the 
British.  There  was  needed  a  man  who  would  be 
acceptable  to  both  parties,  and  who  would  be  able 
to  perfect  the  system  which  Gregory  wished  to,  but 
could  not,  carry  out.  Theodore  was,  like  Saul,  a 
native  of  Tarsus,  a  city  of  Cilicia  ;  he  was  a  member 
of  the  Greek  Church,  therefore  his  appointment  was 
acceptable  to  the  British  party ;  he  was  appointed  by 
the  Pope,  he  was  on  that  account  acceptable  to  the 
Roman  party  :  he  succeeded  in  fusing  the  two  into 
one,  so  that  under  him  the  Anglo-Saxon  Church  was 
for  the  first  time  united  ^ 

Theodore,  in  company  with  Adrian,  immediately 
began  a  general  visitation  of  his  province.  Wherever 
he  went,  he  proceeded  in  a  thoroughly  practical,  if 
a  somewhat  autocratic,  manner.  He  everywhere  in- 
culcated Roman  customs,  and  behaved  somewhat 
harshly  to  the  Britons,  refusing  communion  with  them 
unless  they  adopted  Roman  rites.  Before  his  time 
there  had  been,  no  parish  churches,  and  no  residential 
clergy ;  the  bishop  and  clergy  resided  in  monasteries, 
frequently  at  a  great  distance  from  their  people,  in 
sequestered  villages  and  secluded  situations.  Follow- 
ing the  custom  with  which  he  had  become  familiar 
in  the  Greek  Church,  he  encouraged  the  formation 
of  parishes,  and  thus  remedied  the  roving  character 
which  had  hitherto  prevailed  amongst  the  clergy ; 
village  churches  were  built,  order  and  subordination 

'  "  Is  primus  erat  in  Archiepiscopis  cui  omnis  Anglorum  ecclesia 
manus  dare  consentiret."— (Bede,  iv.  2.) 


94 


FROM  ARCHBISHOP  THEODORE  TO 


were  promoted  ;  the  bishops  who,  during  his  primacy, 
increased  from  seven  to  seventeen,  were  confined  to 
their  dioceses,  and  the  regular  and  secular  clergy  to 
their  appointed  spheres  of  work.  For  the  endowment 
of  the  churches,  he  adopted  the  plan  which  Justinian 
had  introduced  into  the  Greek  Church ;  he  persuaded 
the  thanes  and  landed  proprietors  to  build  and  endow 
churches  on  their  estates,  and  to  assign  their  chap- 
lains the  independent  position  of  incumbents,  thus 
securing  a  constant  intercourse  between  the  clergy- 
man, the  thane's  (or,  as  we  should  now  say,  the 
squire's)  family,  and  his  tenants  ;  in  return  for  which 
he  conceded  to  them  and  their  heirs  the  right  of  ap- 
pointing to  the  livings,  provided  the  church  had  a  suf- 
ficient income  for  the  maintenance  of  the  ministers. 
To  this  principle,  advocated  by  Theodore,  must  be  at- 
tributed the  foundation  of  our  parochial  system ;  the 
endowment  provided  by  his  system  arose  entirely 
from  the  piety  of  individuals,  who  provided  for  the 
spiritual  wants  of  their  tenants,  and  the  maintenance 
of  the  church  fabric,  partly  by  gifts  of  money,  partly 
by  tithes  chargeable  on  their  estates  V 

Wilfrid  had,  as  we  have  already  seen,  been  deposed 
from  the  see  of  York,  and  been  succeeded  by  Chad. 
One  of  the  first  measures  of  Theodore  in  his  visitation, 
was  to  depose  Chad,  and  to  reinstate  Wilfrid  in  the 
Northumbrian  bishopric.  He  soon  detected  a  flaw 
in  Chad's  consecration.  Archbishop  Deusdedit  having 
died,  and  the  see  of  Canterbury  being  vacant,  Chad 
had  repaired  for  consecration  to  Wini,  Bishop  of  Win- 

'  "  Contulit  itaque  .  .  .  piissimus  Theodoras  facultatem,  excitabat  fide- 
lium  devotionem  et  voluntatem  .  .  .  ecclesias  fabricandi,  parochias  distin- 
guendi,  assensus  eisdem  regies  procurandi,  ut,  .  .  .  earundem  perpetuo 
patrinatu  guaderent." — (Elmham,  285.) 


THE  LICHFIELD  ARCHBISHOPRIC. 


95 


Chester,  who,  in  order  to  observe  the  canonical  re- 
quirement, called  in  the  assistance  of  two  British 
bishops,  which  raised  doubts  amongst  the  Roman 
party  as  to  the  regularity  of  Chad's  consecration. 
"  You  have  not  been  properly  consecrated,"  said 
Theodore.  "If  you  consider  that  I  have  not  re- 
ceived the  episcopate  rightly,"  replied  Chad,  "  I  wil- 
lingly retire  from  my  office,  of  which,  indeed,  I  never 
thought  myself  worthy,  but  which  I  undertook  for 
the  sake  of  obedience  to  command."  So  the  meek 
and  gentle  Chad  went  back  to  his  beloved  monas- 
tery at  Lastingham.  But  Theodore  was  so  struck 
with  Chad's  humility,  that  he  himself  supplied  what 
was  lacking  in  his  orders,  and  soon  afterwards  ob- 
tained for  him  from  Wulfhere,  King  of  Mercia,  the 
vacant  see  of  Lichfield,  where  his  name  is  still  vene- 
rated, and  the  cathedral  church  dedicated  to  his 
memory. 

To  Theodore  is  to  be  attributed  the  introduction  of 
synodal  action  into  the  Church,  for  the  regulation  of 
Church  matters  ;  and  on  September  24,  a.d.  673,  was 
held  at  Hertford  the  first  English  provincial  synod. 
At  the  synod  there  were  present  Bisi,  Bishop  of  East 
Anglia  ;  Putta,  Bishop  of  Rochester  ;  Eleutherius,  Bi- 
shop of  Wessex ;  and  Winfrid,  who  had  succeeded 
Chad  at  Lichfield.  Theodore  brought  before  it  a  col- 
lection of  Canons  of  the  ancient  Councils,  from  which 
he  had  selected  ten  as  being  most  adapted  to  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  English  Church.  These  Canons 
enacted  :  (i.)  Conformity  in  the  observance  of  Easter  ; 
(2.)  That  no  Bishop  should  invade  the  diocese  of  ano- 
ther; (3.)  That  no  bishop  should  disturb  the  monas- 
teries, or  seize  their  property  ;  (4.)  That  monks  do  not 
remove  from  one  monastery  to  another  without  the 


96 


FROM  ARCHBISHOP  THEODORE  TO 


leave  of  their  abbot;  (5.)  The  same  prohibition  was 
laid  on  the  secular  clergy ;  (6.)  That  neither  a  bishop 
or  priest  could  officiate  out  of  his  own  diocese,  without 
permission  of  the  bishop  in  whose  diocese  they  may 
happen  to  be ;  (7.)  That  a  synod  should  be  assembled 
twice  annually;  (8.)  This  canon  regulated  the  priority 
of  bishops;  (9.)  That  the  number  of  bishops  should 
be  augmented;  (10.)  This  canon  regarded  the  sacred- 
ness  of  marriages. 

Theodore  at  once  set  himself  to  carrying  out  the 
ninth  Canon  of  the  Council.  He  divided  the  immense 
kingdom  of  Northumbria,  consecrating  Eata  to  Hex- 
ham, A.D.  678;  Trumwin  to  Whithern  in  681;  and 
Cuthbert  to  Lindisfarne  in  685.  Thesjs  alterations 
met  with  strong  opposition,  in  consequence  of  which 
Winfrid,  Bishop  of  Lichfield,  was  deposed,  and  a  much 
greater  than  he,  Wilfrid, — whom,  on  the  deposition  of 
Chad,  Theodore  had  reinstated  in  the  see  of  York  in 
669, — again  got  into  trouble. 

In  670,  King  Oswy  having  died,  was  succeeded  in 
his  kingdom  by  his  son  Egfrid,  who  at  first  lived  on 
friendly  terms  with  Wilfrid. 

As  soon  as  he  was  reinstated  in  his  diocese,  Wilfrid 
set  himself  to  remodelling  it  with  great  munificence. 
The  first  thing  he  took  in  hand  was  the  restoration 
of  his  cathedral,  which  was  in  a  very  dilapidated  state  ; 
the  roof,  which  was  only  thatched,  he  covered  with 
lead  ;  the  windows,  which  were  mere  openings  in  the 
wall,  with  curtains  before  them,  he  filled  with  glass, 
but  "  such  glass  as  permitted  the  sun  to  shine  within." 
At  Ripon,  he  built  a  church  towering  to  a  great  height, 
of  polished  stone,  with  ornamented  pillars  and  porches, 
and  arched  vaults  and  winding  cloisters ;  the  church  of 
Hexham  was  even  more  sumptuous,  so  that  it  was 


THE   LICHFIELD  ARCHBISHOPRIC. 


97 


said  that  no  church  on  this  side  of  the  Alps  could 
compare  with  it ;  he  erected  also,  or  restored,  several 
other  churches.  His  munificence  was  unbounded,  and 
he  assumed  an  almost  royal  state  and  retinue.  At  the 
same  time,  he  laboured  incessantly  in  the  improve- 
ment of  church  services,  in  teaching  church  song,  and 
his  other  episcopal  duties.  His  popularity  for  a  time 
knew  no  limits.  At  length,  the  question  began  to  be 
asked,  "How  was  all  the  money  raised?"  It  must 
be  remembered  that  the  money  and  the  distribution 
of  the  tithes  for  the  maintenance  of  the  clergy  and  the 
church,  were  at  that  time  left  to  the  bishop,  and  these 
Wilfrid  used  at  his  discretion.  He  had  also  a  large 
income  arising  from  his  see,  and  also  from  his  monas- 
teries at  Ripon  and  Hexham.  Added  to  this,  priors, 
abbots,  and  abbesses,  and  thanes,  often  left  him  their 
possessions ;  part  of  which,  if  not  devoted  to  the 
Church,  would  have  gone  to  the  king. 

Men  began  to  complain  of  his  extravagance  ;  and 
the  alienation  of  property  from  the  royal  exchequer 
was  more  than  the  king,  who  hitherto  had  befriended 
him,  could  tolerate.  There  was,  moreover,  a  woman 
in  the  case. 

Etheldred,  the  wife  of  Egfrid,  had  vowed  a  life  of 
perpetual  virginity,  and  had  eventually  become  a  nun, 
having  accepted  the  veil  from  Wilfrid  himself  in  the 
convent  of  Coldingham.  But  when  the  king  married 
Ermenburga,  the  sister  of  the  King  of  Wessex,  Wilfrid 
objected  to  the  second  marriage,  and  so  drew  down 
upon  himself  the  anger,  not  only  of  the  king,  but  also 
of  the  queen,  who  did  all  in  her  power  to  influence  the 
king  against  him.  The  king  determined,  with  Arch- 
bishop Theodore's  approval,  without  any  respect  to 
Wilfrid's  vested  interests  and  canonical  rights,  to  di- 
ll 


98 


FROM  ARCHBISHOP  THEODORE  TO 


vide  his  immense  diocese.  Wilfrid,  a  very  different 
man  to  Chad,  was  not  Hkely  to  brook  an  injustice, 
so  he  appealed  to  Pope  Agatho.  The  Pope,  in  a 
synod  held  in  a  chamber  of  the  Lateran  Basilica, 
which  was  attended  by  fifty  bishops,  decided  in  his 
favour,  and  ordered  that  Wilfrid  should  be  reinstated 
in  his  diocese,  as  it  existed  before  the  partition.  Elated 
with  his  success,  Wilfrid  returned  to  England  in  the 
spring  of  680,  the  bearer  of  a  letter  from  the  Pope,  to 
which  was  attached  the  bull,  or  leaden  seal  ^  a  sight 
to  which  England  was  then  unaccustomed.  The  king 
convened  a  council  of  clergy  and  laity  ;  and  what  must 
have  been  Wilfrid's  surprise,  when,  instead  of  confirm- 
ing the  pope's  action,  they  determined  that  the  appeal 
to  Rome  was  a  public  offence,  and  threw  him  into 
prison,  where  he  was  confined  in  a  cell  rarely  lighted 
by  the  sunshine,  and  never  by  a  lamp.  The  papal 
mandate,  which  declared  an  everlasting  anathema 
against  any  one  who  should  resist  the  decree  of  re- 
instating Wilfrid,  summoned  Theodore  to  a  Council 
of  Constantinople''.  The  archbishop  shewed  his  in- 
dependence by  obeying  neither  order ;  he  did  not 
reinstate  Wilfrid,  nor  did  he  attend  the  council  ;  and 
the  Pope  did  not  issue  his  anathema.  It  is  plain  that 
the  time  had  not  yet  come  when  the  English  Church 
owned  the  supremacy  of  Rome. 

Still  Theodore,  although  determined  not  to  be  the 
tool  of  Rome,  was  not  unnaturally  inclined  to  exalt 
the  power  to  which  he  owed  his  elevation.  Having 
reason  to  believe  that  John  "  the  Precentor,"  who  had 
lately  come  to  England  on  an  invitation  from  Benedict 

«  From  this  "bulla,"  or  leaden  seal,  with  the  image  of  SS. Peter  and 
Paul  attached,  the  Pope's  letters  were  called  "  bulls." 
Summoned  to  deliberate  on  the  Monothelite  heresy. 


THE  LICHFIELD  ARCHBISHOPRIC. 


99 


Biscop,  had  received  instructions  from  the  Pope  to 
investigate  the  orthodoxy  of  the  EngHsh  Church,  he, 
in  deference  to  the  Pope,  a.d.  680,  convened  the 
second  provincial  synod  at  Hatfield,  in  Hertfordshire, 
at  which  John  the  Precentor  was  present;  the  synod 
accepted  the  decrees  of  the  first  five  general  councils, 
as  well  as  those  of  a  synod  which  had  been  held  in 
Rome,  A.D.  649,  under  Martin  I.,  and  condemned  the 
Monothelites '.  Thus  Theodore  established  the  ortho- 
doxy of  the  English  Church. 

Theodore  died  a.d.  690,  at  the  age  of  eighty-eight. 
His  primacy  marks  one  of  the  most  important  eras  of 
our  Church.  Before  then,  says  the  Saxon  Chronicle  ^ 
"  the  bishops  had  been  Romans,  but  from  this  time 
they  were  English."  To  him  is  to  be  attributed,  as 
has  been  already  stated,  the  establishment  of  our 
parochial  system,  and  the  increase  of  the  episcopate. 
To  Theodore  (himself  an  author  of  high  repute,  as 
shewn  by  his  "  Penitential "),  and  to  his  no  less  gifted 
friend  Adrian,  England  owes  the  successive  appear- 
ances of  Aldhelm,  Bede,  Egbert,  and  Alcuin,  and  the 
foundation  of  that  scholarship  for  which  England  was 
so  long  and  so  justly  famous  amongst  European  na- 

'  The  Monothelite  heresy,  which  found  an  advocate  in  Pope  Honorius, 
was  condemned  in  a  Lateran  Council,  held  a.d.  649,  and  more  autho- 
ritatively in  the  Council  of  Constantinople,  a.d.  680.  In  the  thirteenth 
session  of  this  Council,  Pope  Honorius  was  anathematized,  in  company 
with  Theodore,  Sergius,  and  others,  as  having  followed  him  in  his  heresy. 
This  anathema  was  confirmed  by  Leo  II.,  who  wrote  to  the  Emperor 
Constantine  Pogonatus:  "  Anathematizamus  ....  necnon  et  Honorium, 
qui  hanc  Apostolicum  Ecclcsiam  non  ApostolicK  traditionis  doctrina 
lustravit,  sed  profana  traditione  immaculatam  subvertere  conatus  est." 
Succeeding  Popes  for  three  centuries  invariably  repeated  this  confirma- 
tion, in  the  profession  of  faith  which  they  made  at  the  time  of  their 
accession.  (Blunt's  Diet,  of  Theol.)  But  what  becomes  of  Papal  In- 
fallibility ?  ^  A.D.  690. 

H  2 


lOO 


FROM  ARCHBISHOP  THEODORE  TO 


tions.  Through  Theodore  the  larger  monasteries  were 
converted  into  seminaries  of  learning,  to  which  laity, 
as  well  as  clergy,  were  admitted  ;  by  him  the  ancient 
library  at  Canterbury,  founded  by  St.  Augustine,  was 
largely  added  to ;  a  general  love  of  learning  was  pro- 
moted, so  that  Bede  tells  us  that  in  his  time  the 
scholars  of  Theodore  and  Adrian  were  as  well  versed 
in  the  Greek  and  Latin  languages  as  their  own ' ;  and 
Alcuin,  under  whom  the  literary  fame  of  ancient  Eng- 
land reached  its  height  (that  height,  however,  the  im- 
mediate precursor  of  a  dark  and  stormy  night  of  ig- 
norance), could  boast  of  the  learned  men  of  England, 
to  whom  Charlemagne  himself,  when  he  wished  to 
revive  the  almost  extinguished  literature  of  France, 
applied  for  assistance. 

Before  the  death  of  Theodore,  a  reconciliation  was 
effected  by  means  of  Earconwald,  Bishop  of  London, 
between  him  and  Wilfrid  ;  the  result  was  that  Wilfrid 
was  reinstated  in  the  see  of  York. 

Wilfrid  returned  to  his  diocese  with  a  spirit  un- 
schooled by  adversity.  Egfrid,  having  been  killed 
in  battle,  was  succeeded  by  his  natural  brother,  Ald- 
frid,  who  had  been  educated  in  the  British  Church. 
For  five  years  after  his  restoration  Wilfrid  managed 
to  keep  himself  quiet ;  after  that,  open  war  broke  out 
between  him  and  the  king.  Aldfrid  and  the  Witage- 
mot  determined  again  to  divide  the  diocese  of  York, 
and  to  convert  his  beloved  monastery  of  Ripon  into 
an  independent  see.  Wilfrid  objected.  Brightwald, 
who  had  succeeded  Theodore  at  Canterbury,  called 
a  synod  at  Eastenfeld,  at  which  the  king  attended. 
Wilfrid  was  asked  whether  he  would  comply  with 
the  decrees  of  the  late  archbishop,  in  other  words,  whe- 

'  Bede,  iv.  2. 


THE  LICHFIELD  ARCHBISHOPRIC. 


101 


ther  he  would  consent  to  the  division  of  his  diocese. 
He  pleaded  the  papal  decision,  and  asked  them  whe- 
ther they  would  dare  to  compare  the  decrees  of  an 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  with  those  of  the  Popes 
of  Rome,  Agatho,  Benedict,  and  Sergius  "\  He  ap- 
pealed to  the  great  benefits  he  had  himself  conferred 
on  the  Church.  Who,  but  he,  had  rooted  out  the 
errors  of  the  Scottish  schismatics  ?  had  brought  back 
the  right  observance  of  Easter  and  the  coronal  ton- 
sure ?  had  introduced  the  antiphonal  chant,  and  esta- 
blished the  Benedictine  rule  for  the  monastic  life  ? 

Again  he  appealed  to  Rome.  This  appeal  was  a 
new  offence ;  he  was  judged  to  be  contumacious,  de- 
posed and  excommunicated ;  and  so  great  was  the 
detestation  in  which  he  was  held,  that  no  one  was 
allowed  to  eat  in  his  company,  food  blessed  by  him 
was  to  be  thrown  away,  the  sacred  vessels  which  he 
had  used  were  to  be  considered  as  polluted, 

Again  the  old  man,  now  verging  on  seventy,  bent 
on  foot  his  way  to  Rome,  whither  Archbishop  Bright^ 
wald  also  sent  his  envoys.  The  case  of  both  parties 
was  laid  before  a  council  assembled  at  Rome,  which 
devoted  four  months  and  seventy  sittings  to  their 
consideration.  Again  the  Pope,  now  John  VI.,  de- 
cided in  his  favour,  but  with  no  better  success  than 
before.  The  king  refused  to  "  alter  a  sentence  issued 
by  himself,  the  archbishop,  and  all  the  dignitaries  of 
the  land,  for  any  writings  coming,  as  they  called  it, 
from  the  apostolical  see." 

But  the  King  Aldfrid  died,  having,  according  to 
the  statement  of  his  sister,  the  Abbess  Elfleda,  ex- 

"  Interrogavit  eos  qua  fronte  auderent  statutis  Apostolicis  ab  Aga* 
thone  sancto,  et  Benedicto  electo,  et  beato  Sergio,  sanctissimis  Papis,  .  .  . 
praeponere." — (Eddius.) 


I02  FROM  ARCHBISHOP  THEODORE  TO 


pressed  on  his  death-bed  contrition  for  his  conduct 
towards  Wilfrid,  and  his  resolution,  had  he  lived,  of 
reinstating  him.  Archbishop  Brightwald,  wavering 
and  fearing  the  anger  of  Rome,  summoned  another 
synod,- A.D.  705,  somewhere  near  the  river  Nidd",  at 
which  the  young  king  and  all  the  chief  men  of  the 
kingdom  attended.  The  bishops  and  thanes  took 
their  stand  by  the  Synod  of  Eastenfeld ;  the  arch- 
bishop sided  with  Wilfrid.  After  a  long  and  angry 
debate,  a  compromise  was  effected  by  a  great  and 
unexpected  concession  from  Wilfrid ;  it  was  decided 
not  to  accept  the  papal  decree,  nor  that  Wilfrid 
should  be  reinstated  at  York,  but  that  John  of  Hex- 
ham should  be  appointed  to  that  see,  and  that  Wil- 
frid should  succeed  him  at  Hexham,  and  retain  the 
monastery  at  Ripon. 

Shortly  afterwards  (a.d.  709)  Wilfrid  ended  his  long 
and  stormy  life  in  his  monastery  at  Oundle,  at  the  age 
of  seventy-six,  after  an  episcopate  of  forty-five  years. 
As  a  prelate,  or  missionary,  he  has  had  few  equals  ; 
but  a  life,  which  might  have  been  one  of  still  greater 
usefulness,  was  marred  by  his  attempts  to  enforce  on 
the  Church,  of  which  he  was  a  bishop,  an  unwilling 
obedience  to  the  judgment  of  an  alien  Church.  He 
was  the  first  to  set  the  example  of  appeals  to  Rome 
from  a  judicial  sentence  of  the  English  Church,  and 
his  example  shews  how  unheeded  such  appeals  were, 
not  only  by  the  civil,  but  also  the  ecclesiastical  au- 
thorities. 

Romanists  assert  that  the  Pope's  judgment  was  not 
recognised  in  England,  because  Wilfrid  had  obtained 
it  first  by  bribery,  and  afterwards  by  misrepresenta- 
tion.    But  this  is  passing  an  indifferent  compliment 

"  Bede,  v.  19. 


THE  LICHFIELD  ARCHBISHOPRIC. 


to  the  Pope,  by  imputing  to  him  the  possibility  of 
being  bribed  to  do  an  injustice". 

Before  parting  with  Wilfrid,  a  word  must  be  said 
about  his  friend  Benedict  Biscop,  sometimes  known 
as  "  Baducing,"  a  man  in  learning  inferior  to  neither 
Theodore  or  Adrian ;  the  founder  of  monasteries,  and 
the  promoter  of  ecclesiastical  art,  whose  name,  like 
Wilfrid's,  is  so  closely  connected  with  the  Church 
history  of  Northumbria.  A  high-born  Northumbrian, 
he  gave  up,  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  his  rank  as 
a  king's  thane,  and  his  worldly  estates,  as  Bede  says, 
"to  take  service  under  the  true  king."  It  was  he 
who  accompanied  Wilfrid  in  his  first  journey  to  Rome, 
A.D.  653.  He  spent  the  time  between  665 — 667  at 
the  famous  monastery  of  Lerins,  where  he  took  the 
tonsure  and  vows  of  a  monk.  Being  in  Rome  at 
the  time^  he  was  requested  by  Pope  Vitalian  to  ac- 
company the  new  archbishop,  Theodore,  to  England, 
and  was  appointed  by  Theodore  to  the  vacant  abbey 
of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul  at  Canterbury,  which,  after 
holding  it  two  years,  he  vacated  in  favour  of  Adrian. 
After  his  return  from  his  fourth  visit  to  Rome, 
A.D.  674,  having  received  from  King  Egfrid  a  grant 
of  land  on  the  borders  of  the  Wear,  he  founded  his 
first  monastery  of  Wearmouth,  in  honour  of  St.  Peter  ; 
the  church  he  built  of  stone,  "  after  the  Roman 
fashion,  which  he  always  loved  ;"  he  brought  over 
the  glaziers  from  France  to  make  the  windows  of 

°  Here  is  certainly  a  dilemma  :  William  of  Malmesbury  (de  Poiitif.) 
says  that  the  king  believed  the  decrees  of  Rome  were  obtained  for  7>ioney^ 
for  that  the  Romans  lefid  themselves  to  people  who  make  presents. 
He  made  altogether  six  visits  to  Rome. 

Bede  ;  compare  iii.  4,  where  he  speaks  of  the  church  of  stone,  which 
Ninias  built  for  the  southern  Picts,  as  "not  being  usual  amongst  the 
Britons." 


I04  FROM  ARCHBISHOP  THEODORE  TO 

the  church,  cloisters,  and  refectory,  thus  being  the 
means  of  teaching  the  Northumbrians  the  art  of 
making  glass,  and  working  in  stone ;  whilst,  through 
a  valuable  collection  of  pictures  and  paintings  which 
he  had  brought  from  Rome,  he  encouraged  amongst 
the  people  a  taste  for  the  fine  arts.  Five  years  after 
the  building  of  Wearmouth,  on  his  return  from  his 
fifth  journey  to  Rome  with  the  "  Precentor  John," 
whom  the  Pope  had  allowed  to  accompany  him  to 
England,  for  the  purpose  of  teaching  the  Wearmouth 
monks  the  system  of  chanting  and  reading  adopted 
in  St.  Peter's,  he  laid  the  foundation  of  his  great 
monastic  work,  the  famous  monastery  at  Gyruum, 
afterwards  called  Jarrow,  on  a  site,  on  the  banks  of 
the  Tyne,  granted  him  by  King  Egfrid ;  a  monastery 
rendered  for  ever  illustrious  by  the  name  of  the 
Venerable  Bede,  who,  when  only  seven  years  of  age, 
was  committed  to  the  care  of  Benedict  Biscop  to  be 
educated,  first  at  Wearmouth,  but  soon  afterwards  at 
Jarrow,  where  he  lived  and  died,  a.d.  735.  These 
two  establishments,  at  the  death  of  Biscop,  which 
occurred  on  Jan.  12,  689,  numbered  no  less  than 
600  monks. 

Theodore,  as  we  have  seen,  was  succeeded  by 
Brightwald,  in  whose  primacy  the  Laws  of  Ina  were 
passed.  By  these  laws  provision  was  made  for  the 
compulsory  payment  of  an  ecclesiastical  tax,  known 
as  Kirk-shot,  which  appears  to  have  been  the  payment 
to  the  Church  of  a  certain  quantity  of  corn,  or  other 
produce  of  the  earth,  as  first-fruits.  Next  to  Bright- 
wald followed  Tatwine,  a.d.  731  ;  then  Nothelm,  735  — 
741.  Nothelm,  when  a  presbyter,  undertook  a  journey 
to  Rome,  for  the  sake  of  collecting  and  copying  manu- 
scripts for  the  English  libraries,  which  were  fast  be- 


THE  LICHFIELD  ARCHBISHOPRIC, 


coming  the  most  famous  in  Europe  ;  and  Bede  men- 
tions him  as  collecting  materials  there  for  his  eccle- 
siastical history''. 

Those  epistles,  doubtless,  would  convey  the  original 
plan  of  St.  Gregory  for  a  second  metropolitan  at  York  ; 
they  would  shew  also  that  it  had  been  his  intention 
that  the  southern  metropolitan  see  should  be  that 
of  London,  and  not  Canterbury.  So  the  King  of 
Northumbria  was  no  longer  willing  that  the  Arch- 
bishop of  the  kingdom  of  Kent  should  have  supreme 
authority  over  the  bishop  of  his  kingdom,  Accord- 
ingly, the  great  event  in  the  primacy  of  Nothelm  was 
the  elevation  of  the  diocese  of  York  into  a  second 
metropolitan  see,  of  which  Egbert,  a  noble  patron 
of  learning,  and  the  friend  of  Bede,  cousin  of  the 
king,  Ceolwulf,  and  brother  of  his  successor,  was 
appointed  archbishop. 

The  first  two  Archbishops  of  York,  Egbert  and 
Albert,  were  men  of  great  learning  and  eminence. 
Egbert  composed  a  "  Penitential "  for  the  guidance 
of  priests  in  hearing  confessions,  and  a  collection  of 
Church  laws  and  canons  in  the  Engrlish  langfuape ; 
he  also  formed  a  valuable  library  at  York,  and  died 
after  a  pontificate  of  thirty-four  years. 

Albert,  his  successor,  was  master  of  the  school 
which  Egbert  had  founded  at  York ;  there  Alcuin 
was  his  pupil  and  successor,  and  to  him  Albert  left 
the  charge  of  his  valuable  library.  Albert,  Alcuin 
says,  "  was  a  pattern  of  goodness,  justice,  piety,  and 

'  "  Nothelm,  afterwards  going  to  Rome,  having  with  leave  of  the 
present  Pope,  Gregory,  searched  into  the  archives  of  the  holy  Roman 
Church,  found  there  some  Epistles  of  the  blessed  Pope  Gregory"  (i.e. 
Gregory  the  Great),  "and  other  Popes;  and  returning  home  .  .  .  brought 
them  to  me  to  be  inserted  in  my  history."— (Bede's  Preface.) 


I06  FROM  ARCHBISHOP  THEODORE  TO 


liberality ;  he  guarded  the  lambs  of  Christ  from  the 
wolf,  bearing  back  on  his  shoulders  the  wanderers, 
fearing  neither  kings  nor  earls,  if  they  misbehaved." 
After  holding  the  see  for  thirteen  years,  he  resigned 
it  to  Eanbald,  another  of  his  pupils  at  York,  and  re- 
tired into  a  monastery,  that  he  might  wholly  devote 
himself  to  God. 

Such  were  the  eminent  prelates  who  were  the  first 
Archbishops  of  York,  Unfortunately,  in  no  great 
length  of  time,  disputes  between  the  two  metropoli- 
tans of  Canterbury  and  York  for  precedence,  caused, 
as  we  shall  see  hereafter,  not  unfrequently  great  scan- 
dal in  the  Church. 

In  the  year  741,  Cuthbert,  the  friend  of  Winfrid 
(who  is  better  known  as  St.  Boniface,  the  Apostle  of 
Germany^),  succeeded  to  the  primacy.  In  a  letter  to 
Cuthbert,  in  which  he  styles  himself  Legate  of  the 
Catholic  and  Apostolic  Church,  Boniface  boasts  of  his 
having  procured  a  synodical  submission  of  the  German 
Church  to  Rome,  and  advises  Cuthbert  to  do  the  same 
in  England;  transmitting  to  him  at  the  same  time 
a  body  of  canons  passed  by  his  obsequious  synod. 
Cuthbert  shared  the  Roman  views  of  his  friend  Boni- 
face, and  in  consequence  of  his  letter  he  sought  and 
obtained  permission  from  the  king,  Ethelbald,  to  sum- 
mon a  synod  at  Cloveshoo  a.d.  747.  The  synod 
was  opened  by  the  reading  of  two  letters  from  Pope 

'  See  p.  51. 

'  That  Cloveshoo  was  either  in  Mercia,  or  in  some  kingdom  subordi- 
nate to  Mercia,  is  probable  from  the  fact  that  all  the  recorded  Councils  of 
Cloveshoo  date  within  a  period  coincident  with  the  predominance  of 
Mercia,  and  that  the  Mercian  kings  take  the  lead  in  them,  often  without 
the  presence  of  any  other  king  at  all.  Cliff-at-Hoo,  in  Kent,  the  old  in- 
terpretation, rests  solely  on  the  resemblance  of  name,  and  was  not  in 
Mercia.    (Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  122.) 


THE  LICHFIELD  ARCHBISHOPRIC. 


107 


Zacharias  by  the  archbishop.  Subjects  of  much  in- 
terest were  discussed,  and  canons  were  passed  on  the 
model  of  Boniface's  continental  synod ;  the  canons 
were  mainly  directed  to  the  correction  of  irregularity 
in  morals  and  discipline ;  they  enjoined  a  strict  uni- 
formity with  Rome's  offices  and  usages ;  but  when 
Boniface's  proposed  plan  came  on,  of  referring  difficult 
questions  to  Rome,  the  members  refused  to  compro- 
mise the  dignity  of  the  Church,  and  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  was  declared  to  be  its  supreme  head 

Next  to  Bregwin,  who  succeeded  St.  Cuthbert  a.d. 
759,  came,  a.d.  766,  Janbert,  or  Lambert  (for  he  is 
known  under  both  names) ;  and  under  him  an  im- 
portant, although  a  short-lived,  change  in  the  govern- 
ment of  the  English  Church  took  place,  viz,  the  eleva- 
tion of  the  see  of  Lichfield  into  an  archbishopric.  At 
that  time  Offa,  King  of  Mercia,  the  most  powerful 
king  of  the  Heptarchy,  resolved,  that  as  the  kingdom 
of  Kent,  and  also  that  of  Northumbria,  had  metro- 
politans, his  own  kingdom  of  Mercia  was  entitled  to 
one  also.  He  was  also  glad  to  deprive  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury,  who  had  offended  him,  not  only  of  his 
prestige,  but  also  his  emoluments,  as  his  property  in 
Mercia  was  required  for  the  endowment  of  the  new 
archbishopric. 

The  great  difficulty  was  to  obtain  the  pall  for  the 
new  archbishop,  Higbert,  without  which  he  would  not 
be  on  an  equal  footing  with  the  two  other  metro- 
politans. How  was  this  to  be  obtained  ?  To  the 
shame  of  both  Pope  and  king,  it  must  be  confessed 

"  "If  there  be  anything  which  a  bishop  cannot  reform  in  his  own 
diocese,  let  him  lay  it  before  the  archbishop  in  synod,  and  pubhcly 
before  all,  in  order  to  its  being  reformed."  — (Canon  of  Council  of 
Cloveshoo.) 


io8 


FROM  ARCHBISHOP  THEODORE  TO 


that  Offa  was  not  too  low  to  offer,  nor  the  Pope  to 
accept,  a  bribe  ^. 

The  Pope,  Adrian,  looked  for  an  opportunity  of 
establishing  the  papal  supremacy  in  England,  and 
so  he  did  not  hesitate  to  upset  the  arrangement  of 
his  predecessor,  St.  Gregory.  That  Offa  was  leading 
a  grossly  immoral  life^  that  he  was  persecuting  an 
archbishop,  concerned  him  but  little.  He  was  able 
to  make  his  own  terms,  which  were  more  valuable  even 
than  the  bribe  which  he  had  received  :  those  terms 
were  that  two  Papal  legates  were  to  be  admitted  into 
the  kingdom,  and  allowed  to  hold  a  council.  The  king 
consented  ;  the  two  legates  arrived,  and  were  received 
with  high  marks  of  honour.  The  great  object  of  their 
visit  was  attained,  and  a  precedent  ^  for  papal  legates 
being  sent  to  England  was  established.  A  council 
was  held  at  Calcuith  ^  in  presence  of  the  king  and  the 
papal  legates ;  in  vain  the  archbishop  opposed  the 
mutilation  of  his  see ;  the  archbishopric  of  Lichfield 
was  decreed,  and  the  sees  of  Hereford,  Worcester, 
and  Sydnocester,  in  addition  to  the  Mercian  sees  of 
Elmham  and  Dunwich,  became  suffragans  of  the  new 
metropolitan. 

Thus  England  owes  the  first  public  encouragement 

*  "  Data  pecunia  infinita,  a  sede  Apostolica  qua;  nuUi  deest  pecuniam 
largienti,  licentiam  impetravit." — (Matt.  Par.  Hist.  Ang.)  So  also  William 
of  Malmesbury :  "  Epistolis  ad  Adrianum  Papum  et  fortassis  muneribus 
egit  ut  pallio  Lichfieldensem  episcopum  contra  morem  veterum  efferret." 
~{De  Gest.  Pont.) 

^  Alcuin,  whilst  he  allows  that  Offa's  best  deeds  were  tarnished  by 
avarice  and  cruelty,  yet  on  the  whole  commends  him. 

It  was,  however,  the  only  instance  of  papal  legates  in  England  during 
the  Anglo-Saxon  period. 

*  Great  doubts  exist  as  to  this  place.  Bishop  Gibson  supposes  it  to  be 
Kelceth  in  Lancashire;  Dr. Lingard,  Chelsea;  and  Mr. Soames,  Challock, 
or  Chalk,  in  Kent.    (Robertson's  Ch.  Hist.  ii.  176 n.) 


THE  LICHFIELD  ARCHBISHOPRIC. 


109 


of  papal  assumption  to  the  selfish  motives  of  a  licen- 
tious king.  The  new  archbishopric,  however,  lasted 
only  about  fifteen  years  :  Ethelhard,  the  successor  of 
Janbert,  with  the  consent  of  Kenulph,  the  King  of 
Mercia,  went  to  Rome,  with  a  request  that  the  see 
of  Lichfield  might  be  reduced  to  its  former  state ;  the 
Pope  consented,  and  the  new  archbishopric  was  abol- 
ished by  the  Council  of  Cloveshoe,  a.d.  803. 

Towards  the  end  of  his  life,  Offa,  whose  conscience 
was  burdened,  amongst  other  crimes,  with  the  bar- 
barous murder  of  Ethelbert,  King  of  East  Anglia, 
not  only  built  the  abbey  of  St.  Alban's,  but  also  un- 
dertook a  pilgrimage  to  Rome.  Ina,  King  of  Wessex, 
when  on  a  pilgrimage  to  the  same  city,  had  endowed 
a  school  for  the  education  of  English  children ;  this 
endowment  Offa  now  increased  by  a  tax  imposed 
upon  every  family  in  his  dominions ;  thus  arose  the 
payment  of  Rome-scot,  or  Rome-penny,  afterwards 
called  Peter -pence,  which  was  confirmed  by  Ethel- 
wulf,  A.D.  855. 


CHAPTER  III. 


THE   DANISH  INVASIONS. 

THE  end  of  the  eighth,  or  the  beginning  of  the 
ninth  century,  may  be  regarded  as  the  period 
of  the  highest  intellectual  pre-eminence  of  England ; 
but  now  a  long  period  of  religious  and  intellectual, 
as  well  as  of  political,  darkness  set  in. 

Of  the  kingdoms  of  the  Heptarchy,  at  first  Kent 
had  been  the  chief;  but  its  power  declined  at  an 
early  period,  to  be  succeeded  by  Northumbria,  which 
in  its  turn  fell  at  the  end  of  the  seventh  century.  For 
a  time  the  kings  of  Mercia  and  Wessex  contended 
for  the  supremacy,  till  (a.d.  757 — 796)  Offa,  King  of 
Mercia,  who  was  able  to  treat  as  an  equal  with  the 
powerful  Charlemagne,  was  the  Bretwalda.  After  his 
death  the  over-lordship  passed  to  Wessex,  in  the  per- 
son of  Egbert,  under  whom  the  kingdoms  of  the  Hep- 
tarchy came  to  an  end,  and  Egbert  became  sole  king 
of  a  united  England,  a.d.  828. 

Just  as  the  country  seemed  to  be  enjoying  peace 
and  prosperity,  the  Danes,  a  heathen  people  from 
Scandinavia,  of  the  same  stock  as  the  English,  who 
had  been  driven  from  their  own  country  by  the  con- 
quests of  Charlemagne,  began  to  settle  down  in  the 
country.  These  Danish  invasions  had  commenced 
as  early  as  787 ;  but  at  the  end  of  Egbert's  reign 
they  became  more  formidable,  and  in  833  Egbert 
was  defeated  by  them,  in  a  battle  in  which  two 
bishops,  Wilbert  of  Sherborne,  and  Herefrid  of  Wor- 
cester, were  killed, 

Egbert,  however,  managed  to  keep  them  tolerably 


THE  DANISH  INVASIONS. 


Ill 


under  control  during  his  reign.  But  for  a  long  period 
after  his  death  the  history  of  the  country  is  taken  up 
with  the  ravages  they  committed ;  and  it  was  Chris- 
tianity especially  Avhich  incurred  their  hatred.  For 
not  only  were  these  Northmen  pagans,  but  Charle- 
magne had  rendered  Christianity  doubly  hateful  to 
them,  by  forcing  it  upon  them  as  a  badge  of  slavery. 
Their  lust  of  plunder,  blended  with  a  religious  fanati- 
cism, directed  their  ferocity  especially  against  the  mo- 
nasteries, the  wealth  and  undefended  condition  of 
which  marked  them  out  as  an  easy  object  of  attack ; 
there  alone  books  were  stored,  and  scholars  found 
a  home ;  the  consequence  was  a  general  decay  of 
learning  and  every  peaceful  art.  Once  again  we  hear 
of  a  repetition  of  the  same  wanton  cruelties  as  were 
committed  by  the  Saxons  :  Christianity  again  perse- 
cuted, the  priests  and  monks  slain  at  the  altar ;  whole 
cities  rased  to  the  ground ;  the  same  promiscuous 
slaughter  of  men  ;  the  women  and  children  driven 
off  into  slavery. 

A  period  of  such  national  calamities  as  set  in  with 
the  Danish  conquests,  favourable  as  it  was  to  reli- 
gious corruptions,  affords  but  few  materials  for  eccle- 
siastical history. 

Wulfred,  whom  Ethelard  had  appointed  as  the  first 
Archdeacon  of  Canterbury,  succeeded  him  in  the 
primacy,  a.d.  805  ;  during  his  primacy,  which  lasted 
twenty-eight  years,  the  only  event  deserving  record 
is  the  synod  of  Calcuith  in  816.  At  this  synod  eleven 
canons  were  passed,  the  most  important  being  the 
second  and  the  fifth.  Canon  II.  enacts  that  at  the 
consecration  of  churches,  where  no  relics  of  martyrs 
can  be  found,  the  consecrated  elements  being  placed 
in  a  pyx  are  sufficient,  for  that  they  are  the  Body  and 


2  12 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


Blood  of  our  Saviour ;  a  canon  which  shews  that  the 
English  Church  did  not  consider  the  second  synod 
of  Nice  a  general  one,  nor  themselves  bound  by  it  \ 
Canon  V,  prohibits  "any  Scotchman  to  baptize,  read 
divine  service,  give  the  Eucharist,  or  perform  any 
part  of  the  sacerdotal  office,"  which  indicates  that 
though  the  Scotch  had  conformed  as  to  Easter,  the 
breach  between  the  Roman  and  British  parties  had 
not  been  healed,  and  that  the  ordination  of  the  Scots 
was  still  considered  doubtful. 

Ceolnoth,  the  first  Dean  of  Canterbury,  became 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  a.d.  833  ;  and  his  primacy 
is  chiefly  remarkable  for  the  charter  granted  by  King 
Ethelwulf,  A.D.  855,  at  the  institution,  it  is  supposed, 
of  St.  Swithin,  ordering  a  general  payment  of  tithes  ^ 
throughout  all  England,  for  the  service  of  God,  "  ex- 
empt from  expeditions,  the  building  of  bridges,  or 
of  forts  ^" 

Ethelwulf,  a  pious  but  superstitious  king,  who  had 
been  educated  by  St.  Swithin  ^  Bishop  of  Winchester, 

'  The  second  canon  of  the  second  synod  of  Nice  enacted,  that  "if  any 
bishop  shall  consecrate  a  church  for  the  future,  without  such  holy  relics, 
let  him  be  deprived  for  making  a  breach  upon  ecclesiastical  tradition." 

>>  The  scriptural  nile  of  devoting  a  tenth  part,  or  a  tithe  of  their  sub- 
stance to  God,  was  observed  by  the  early  converts  to  Christianity  in  this 
land.  So  the  charter  of  Ethelwulf  orders  the  tenth  manse  to  be  so 
applied :  "  Aliquam  portionem  terrarum  hsereditarum  antea  possiden- 
tibus  omnibus  gradibus,  sive  famulis  et  famulabus  (probably  monks  and 
nuns)  Deo  servientibus,  sive  laicis  miseris,  semper  decimam  mansionem  ; 
ubi  minimum  sit,  turn  decimam  partem  omnium  bonorum." 

'  These  taxes,  termed  the  "  Trinoda  necessitas,"  were  ordinarily  im- 
posed on  ecclesiastical  property. 

*'  The  name  of  St.  Swithin  is  connected  with  a  belief  that  if  rain  falls 
on  the  15th  of  July,  it  will  continue  to  rain  for  forty  days.  -Very  little  is 
known  of  St.  Swithin,  except  that  posthumous  honours  were  done  him 
as  a  great  worker  of  miracles.  He  died  in  688,  and  according  to  his 
request,  was  therefore  buried  in  the  churchyard  of  Winchester.  But 


THE  DANISH  INVASIONS. 


and  had  been  called  from  the  cloister  to  the  throne, 
resolved  on  making  a  pilgrimage  to  Rome,  in  which 
his  youngest  son,  Alfred  (the  future  Alfred  the  Great), 
then  seven  years  of  age,  who  had  already  visited  Rome 
before,  accompanied  him.  During  his  visit  to  Rome, 
Ethelwulf  displayed  great  liberality,  rebuilding  the 
English  school  founded  by  Ina,  which  had  been  de- 
stroyed by  fire,  and  confirming  the  grant  of  Peter- 
pence. 

Meanwhile  the  Danes  had  been  pushing  forward 
their  conquests,  and,  a.d.  855,  wintered  in  the  Isle 
of  Sheppey.  Alfred,  who  was  born  at  Wantage, 
A.D.  849,  succeeded  to  the  throne  in  871,  in  his 
twenty-third  year.  He  had  already  given  proofs  of 
his  high  ability  as  a  general ;  but  at  first  his  efforts 
against  the  Danes  were  unsuccessful  ;  in  878  they 
had  completely  overrun  the  kingdom,  which  was 
overwhelmed  in  apparently  hopeless  ruin;  and  Al- 
fred, disguised  in  the  humblest  costume,  was  forced 
to  seek  refuge  with  a  neatherd  in  a  little  island  called 
after  him  Athelney  (Prince's  Island),  amongst  the 
marshes  of  Somersetshire'.  Here  the  people  ga- 
thered around  him,  and  in  a  short  time  he  found 
himself  at  the  head  of  a  large  army,  with  which  he 
totally  routed  the  Danes,  in  a  battle  near  the  modern 

a  century  afterwards  he  was  canonized,  and  the  monks  not  thinking  the 
public  cemetery  a  fitting  place  of  sepulture  for  a  saint,  resolved  to  re- 
move his  body  into  the  choir ;  the  translation  was  to  take  place  on  the 
15th  of  July,  but  the  rain  fell  so  incessantly  for  forty  days  that  the  design 
was  abandoned. 

'  The  story  of  the  neatherd's  wife  entrusting  him  with  the  care  of  the 
baking-cakes,  and  scolding  him  for  his  carelessness  in  letting  them  get 
burnt,  is  a  household  word.  It  is  said  that  Alfred  found  in  the  forest 
a  man  named  Denewulf,  a  common  swineherd,  and  that  being  struck 
with  his  intelligence,  he  had  him  educated,  and  that  this  man  afterwards 
became  Bishop  of  Winchester. 

I 


114 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH, 


Yatton.    The  Danes  capitulated,  and  a  peace  was 
agreed  to  at  Wedmore,  on  condition  of  their  receiving 
baptism,  and  Alfred  himself  stood  godfather  to  Guth- 
rum,  the  Danish  chief,  whom  he  received  as  his 
adopted  son,  giving  him  the  name  of  Athelstan  ; 
Alfred  gave  up  to  them  the  kingdoms  of  East  Anglia 
and  Northumbria,  so  the  Danes  settled  down  in  the 
land,  which  enjoyed  peace  for  ten  years.  During 
these  years  Alfred  rebuilt  London  and  the  other  cities 
which  had  been  destroyed ;  he  established  many  use- 
ful institutions ;  he  divided  England  into  counties, 
hundreds,  and  tithings ;  he  established  the  county 
court,  to  which  appeals  from  the  lower  courts  were 
allowed,  and  at  which  the  Bishop  and  Ealdorrnan 
together  presided  ;  he  made  ^  a  digest  of  the  laws  of 
kings  Ina  and  Offa,  and  of  those  of  King  Ethelbert, 
and  for  this  he  obtained  a  solemn  confirmation  from 
his  legislature ;  he  also  stipulated  for  the  payment  of 
tithes,  Rome-shot,  light-shot,  and  plough-alms,  pro- 
viding by  pecuniary  fines  against  disobedience ;  thus 
affording  another  testimony  to  the  antiquity  of  the 
recognition  of  the  Church's  title  to  a  payment  for 
the  exigencies  of  public  worship^.    Labour  on  Sun- 
days and  holydays  was  forbidden  ^  and  a  severe 
punishment  enacted  against  immorality. 

But  Alfred's  success  as  a  scholar,  and  as  a  restorer 
of  learning,  is  the  most  remarkable  trait  in  his  cha- 
racter. 

'  Alfred  prefaced  his  laws  with  the  Ten  Commandments,  from  which, 
however,  the  second  commandment  is  omitted  from  its  proper  place. 

»  Soames,  Ang.-Sax.  Ch.  p.  156. 
A  similar  prohibition  was  made  by  the  laws  of  Ina.    A  bondman 
working  on  Sundays  by  his  master's  order,  was  declared  free  ;  if  without 
his  order,  he  was  to  suffer  corporal  punishment ;  whilst  a  freeman  work- 
ing on  that  day  lost  his  freedom,  or  was  fined  sixty  shillings. 


THE  DANISH  INVASIONS. 


Having  lost  in  his  infancy  his  mother  Osburgh, 
his  education  was  so  neglected,  that  it  was  not  till 
he  was  twelve  years  of  age  that  he  was  taught  to 
read.  His  step-mother,  Judith,  being  ashamed  of 
the  ignorance  of  her  step-sons,  offered  a  beautifully 
illuminated  manuscript  to  the  one  of  them  who  should 
first  learn  to  read.  Alfred  won  the  prize.  The  love 
of  study  being  once  aroused  in  him,  he  began  to 
thirst  after  knowledge,  and  he  found  that  reading 
to  any  advantage  required  a  knowledge  of  Latin. 
But  so  extinct  had  learning  become  in  England 
under  the  Danish  ravages,  and  so  great  was  the 
prevailing  ignorance,  that  Alfred  himself  complained 
that  he  did  not  know  a  single  individual  to  the  south 
of  the  Thames  who  could  translate  a  Latin  epistle. 
"  There  was  a  time,"  he  said,  "  when  foreigners  sought 
wisdom  and  learning  in  this  island ;  now  we  are 
compelled  to  seek  them  in  foreign  lands."  Accord- 
ingly he  sent  abroad  for  teachers.  At  his  invita- 
tion there  came  over  to  England  Grimbald  of  Rheims, 
and  John  of  old  Saxony ;  with  these  were  associated 
native  teachers,  Asser  his  biographer,  a  Welsh  priest 
from  St.  David's,  Phlegmund,  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury, Werfrith,  Bishop  of  Worcester,  and  his  kins- 
man St.  Neot';  whilst  John  Scotus  Erigena,  one  of 
the  Scots  of  Ireland,  the  most  famous  dialectician  of 
the  day,  received  through  Alfred  a  professorship  at 
Oxford  j.    So  great  was  the  success  of  Alfred's  sys- 

'  Of  St.  Neot,  who  gave  his  name  to  the  town  in  Huntingdonshire,  little 
is  known,  beyond  that  "  he  visited  Rome  city  seven  times,  in  honour  of 
Christ  and  St.  Peter." 

i  Poor  Erigena  came  to  a  sad  end.  From  Oxford  he  removed  to  the 
abbey  of  Malmesbury,  where  his  pupils  murdered  him  with  the  iron  pens 
which  were  then  used  to  write  on  the  wax  tablets. 

I  2 


ii6 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


tern  of  education,  that  Athelstan  had  the  honour  of 
educating  in  Eno^land  three  foreign  kinofs,  Alan  of 
Bretagne,  Louis  of  France,  and  Haco  of  Norway 
Alfred  himself  translated  into  Saxon  the  History 
of  Orosius,  the  Consolations  of  Boethius,  a  philo- 
sopher of  the  sixth  century,  Gregory's  Pastoral  Care, 
and  Bede's  Ecclesiastical  History.  He  also  trans- 
lated certain  portions  of  the  Scriptures,  and  was  en- 
gaged in  the  translation  of  the  Psalms  at  the  time 
of  his  early  death,  at  the  age  of  fifty-two. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  signs  of  the  revival 
of  energy  which  took  place  during  the  reign  of  Al- 
fred, was  the  opening  of  a  communication  with  the 
Christians  of  the  East  and  the  Churches  of  India. 
What  was  the  immediate  cause  of  it  we  do  not 
know,  but  it  is  interesting  to  be  able  to  trace  back 
the  first  intercourse  between  E norland  and  Hindo- 
Stan  to  A.D.  883,  and  to  know  that  it  consisted  in 
an  interchange  of  Christian  feelings,  having  origin- 
ated in  Christian  charity.  In  this  same  spirit,  an 
interchange  of  kind  offices  and  Christian  feeling  took 
place  between  the  King  of  England  and  the  Patriarch 
of  Jerusalem 

Alfred  was  a  great  admirer  of  Rome  ;  in  his  earliest 
youth  he  had  made  two  visits  to  that  city.  During 
the  first  of  these  visits,  his  biographer  Asser  assures 
us  that  the  Pope  Leo  "  anointed  him  for  king,  and, 
taking  him  to  himself  as  a  son  of  his  adoption,  con- 
firmed him."  He  could  hardly  fail  through  life  to 
associate  with  Rome  everything  that  was  grand  and 
magnificent,  and  so  it  is  his  fate  to  fill  a  no  unim- 
portant place  among  the  Anglo-Saxon  builders  of 
that  Roman  system  which  did  so  much  to  under- 
Turner,  ii.  200.  '  Hook,  i.  312  ;  Churton,  p.  217. 


THE  DANISH  INVASIONS. 


117 


mine  the  stability  of  the  English  Church",  And  yet 
in  his  reign  we  meet  with  no  letters  of  submission, 
no  learned  men  sent  from  Rome  to  assist  the  king 
in  his  schemes  for  the  revision  of  the  arts  and 
sciences,  no  intercourse  of  legates,  no  interposing 
in  the  business  of  the  Church,  no  bulls  of  privilege 
for  the  new  abbeys  of  Winchester  and  Athelney : 
and  what  is  more,  King  Alfred  patronized  John 
Scotus  Erigena,  the  opponent  of  Transubstantiation, 
notwithstanding  the  discountenance  he  lay  under  at 
Rome  °. 

To  Alfred  succeeded  his  son  Edward  the  Elder 
(901-925),  who  subdued  the  Danes  as  far  as  the 
Humber.  William  of  Malmesbury  mentions  an  in- 
cident as  occurring  in  this  reign,  which,  if  true, 
would  have  denoted  a  remarkable  advance  of  the 
papal  power  in  England  :  viz.  that  Pope  Formosus, 
A.D.  904,  put  the  kingdom  under  an  interdict,  in 
consequence  of  the  long  vacancy  of  some  of  its 
sees ;  it  is  certain  that  about  this  time  a  greater 
vigour  with  regard  to  the  episcopate  was  manifested, 
in  the  creation  of  the  new  sees  of  Wells,  Crediton, 
and  St.  German's.  But  then  there  is  this  difficulty, 
that  whereas  the  interdict  is  said  to  have  been  issued 
A.D.  904,  Pope  Formosus  had  died  a.d.  896.  Ser- 
gius  III.  was  at  that  time  Pope;  the  cruel  Pope 
who,  having  thrown  Formosus  into  prison,  after  his 
death  caused  his  body  to  be  exhumed,  and  having 

Soames,  Ang.-Sax.  Ch.  143. 
"  Collier,  p.  174.  In  the  time  of  Erigena,  a  French  monk  named 
Paschasc  Radbert  first  taught  the  doctrine  of  Transubstantiation  as  it  is 
now  taught  by  the  Church  of  Rome.  Erigena  strongly  opposed  this  noveL 
doctrine;  and  in  consequence  Nicholas  I.  wrote  to  Charles  the  Bald,  at 
whose  court  he  resided,  to  banish  him  from  France  ;  this  induced  him  to 
come  to  England. 


Il8  THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 

mutilated  it  by  cutting  off  the  head  and  first  two 
fingers,  ordered  it  to  be  thrown  into  the  Tiber.  It 
is  much  more  probable  that  the  king  added  the 
new  sees,  on  the  suggestion  of  Archbishop  Phleg- 
mund,  a  wise  and  diligent  prelate,  than  at  the  in- 
stigation of  such  a  man  as  Sergius. 

Phlegmund's  history  illustrates  one  of  the  many 
instances  of  Rome's  divisions,  which  occasioned  his 
paying  two  visits  to  that  city  in  search  of  the  pall. 
On  his  first  visit  Formosus  was  Pope,  and  he  re- 
turned home  thinking  he  had  been  canonically  con- 
secrated. It  was  not  till  Formosus  was  dead,  and 
a  post  mortem  council  had  been  held  over  him, 
that  he  was  condemned,  and  his  consecrations  pro- 
nounced invalid ;  Phlegmund  therefore  was  obliged 
to  visit  Rome  again  to  obtain  his  pall. 

The  chief  event  in  the  history  of  the  Church,  be- 
tween the  death  of  Alfred  and  the  Norman  conquest, 
was  undoubtedly  the  revival  of  monachism.  From 
the  beginning  of  the  eighth  century  monachism  in 
England  had  been  declining;  the  fervour  of  the  mo- 
nastic life  had  worn  off  ° ;  there  was  an  unwillingness 
to  adopt  its  restraints  ;  external  circumstances  conduced 
towards  the  general  decline,  and  the  Danes  completed 
its  extinction.  By  them  the  venerable  church  of  Lin- 
disfarne,  the  burial-place  of  St.Cuthbert,  and  the  abode 
of  so  many  pious  missionary  bishops,  was  plundered 
and  destroyed,  its  inmates  either  being  murdered  or 
led  captive.  Soon  after,  the  monasteries  of  Wear- 
mouth  and  J  arrow,  the  abode  of  the  Venerable  Bede, 
shared  the  same  fate.  The  noble  and  wealthy  monas- 
teries of  Bardley,  of  Croyland,  of  Medeshamstede 
(Peterborough),  Ely,  Repton,  and  Coldingham,  were 
°  This  was  shewn  by  Boniface's  letter  to  Archbishop  Cuthbert. 


THE  DANISH  INVASIONS. 


119 


wasted  with  fire  and  sword ;  every  soul  belonging  to 
them  was  cruelly  massacred ;  the  treasures  deposited 
in  them  from  the  neighbouring  county  for  safety  were 
plundered,  even  the  monuments  of  the  dead  being 
rifled  for  the  sake  of  the  jewels  which  they  contained  ; 
the  valuable  libraries  were  destroyed ;  the  nuns  ex- 
posed to  the  foulest  indignities.  In  one  (the  wealthy 
monastery  of  Croyland),  the  barbarians  burst  into  the 
church  in  the  time  of  divine  service,  slaughtered  the 
monks,  and  murdered  the  aged  Abbot  Theodore  at 
the  very  horns  of  the  altar,  while  in  the  act  of  cele- 
brating High  Mass. 

Under  such  persecutions  the  monastic  order  had 
become  extinct ;  or,  if  any  possessions  of  the  monas- 
teries escaped  the  rapacity  of  the  Danes,  they  were 
seized  by  the  English  kings  to  defray  the  expenses  of 
the  war.  Alfred  did  his  best  to  restore  them  when  he 
founded  his  monasteries  at  Athelney,  at  Shaftesbury, 
of  which  his  own  daughter  became  abbess,  and  at 
Winchester ;  but  only  with  very  partial  success.  For 
a  time  monasteries  in  England  were  almost  altogether 
abolished ;  the  monks  either  embraced  secular  pro- 
fessions, or  betook  themselves  to  the  monasteries  on 
the  Continent,  more  especially  those  of  Fleury  and 
Ghent ;  or,  if  any  inmates  remained  in  the  monasteries 
in  England,  they  could  hardly  be  regarded  in  the  strict 
sense  as  monks. 

The  restoration  of  the  monastic  system  is  due  partly 
to  Archbishop  Odo,  but  more  especially  to  his  suc- 
cessor in  the  primacy,  St.  Dunstan.  In  their  time 
a  great  many  of  the  clergy  were  married  men ;  and 
this  was  the  case,  not  only  amongst  the  "  secular,"  but 
also  the  "regular"  clergy.  To  establish  a  uniform 
celibacy  amongst  them  ;  to  abolish  entirely  the  secular, 


I20 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


and  to  substitute  the  regular  clergy ;  to  introduce 
a  stricter  observance  of  the  Benedictine  rule  into  the 
monasteries  :  this  was  the  object  of  these  reformers. 

Odo,  a  Dane  of  noble  family,  a  pagan  by  birth, 
being  attracted  by  the  preaching  of  a  Christian  mis- 
sionary, at  an  early  age  embraced  Christianity,  and 
became  naturalized  as  an  Englishman.  In  his  youth 
he  had  been  a  soldier,  and  continued  to  be  so  after  his 
ordination;  even  after  he  was  consecrated,  a.d.  926, 
to  the  bishopric  of  Ramsbury,  he  was  present  at  the 
battle  of  Brunenburg,  where  he  was  engaged  in  the 
hottest  part  of  the  fight.  It  is  probably  this  mixture 
of  the  military  and  episcopal  characters  which  produced 
the  wide  diversity  of  opinion  respecting  him  ;  for  whilst 
he  is  called  by  some  "  Odo  the  Good,"  by  others  he  is 
branded  with  every  opprobrium.  On  the  death  of 
Wulfhelm,  he  was,  a.d.  942,  promoted  to  the  see  of 
Canterbury,  through  Dunstan,  at  that  time  minister 
of  King  Edmund.  Hitherto,  Odo  had  lived  as  one 
of  the  "seculars;"  but  thinking  that  none  but  a  monk 
was  fitted  for  an  Archbishop,  and  that  none  but  a  Bene- 
dictine was  fitted  for  a  monk,  he  went  to  Fleury,  near 
Rouen,  where  a  monastery  existed  on  the  model  of 
St.  Benedict's  monastery  on  Monte  Casino ;  here  he 
embraced  the  Benedictine  rule,  which,  by  the  assist- 
ance of  the  Chancellor  Thurketal,  he  took  every  op- 
portunity of  introducing  into  England. 

But  it  remained  for  St.  Dunstan  to  carry  out  the 
plan  which  Odo  had  begun.  Dunstan,  a  man  who 
was  held  in  much  honour  whilst  he  lived,  and  canon- 
ized after  his  death,  but  whose  memory  has  been  tar- 
nished by  monkish  fables  of  miracles  which  he  never 
did,  and  never  pretended  to  do,  was  of  royal  birth ; 
having  also  for  his  uncles,  Athelm,  Archbishop  of 


THE  DANISH  INVASIONS. 


121 


Canterbury,  and  Elphege,  Bishop  of  Winchester.  He 
was  born  near  Glastonbury,  and  received  his  education 
at  Fleury.  On  his  return  from  Fleury,  King  Edmund 
appointed  him  one  of  his  chaplains,  and  gave  him  the 
ruined  abbey  of  Glastonbury  to  restore,  which,  how- 
ever, was  not  finished  till  the  reign  of  Edred,  a.d.  954. 
This  was  the  first  Benedictine  abbey  in  England,  and 
Dunstan  the  first  Benedictine  abbot.  Amongst  the 
earliest  of  its  monks  were  Ethelwold,  afterwards  Abbot 
of  Abingdon  and  Bishop  of  Winchester  ;  and  Oswald, 
nephew  of  Archbishop  Odo,  afterwards  Bishop  of 
Worcester  and  Archbishop  of  York  :  these  two,  with 
St.  Dunstan,  were  the  principal  agents  in  reintroducing 
monachism,  and  establishing  the  Benedictine  system 
in  England. 

On  the  death  of  Odo,  Elfin,  Bishop  of  Winchester, 
was  appointed  to  succeed  him ;  but  on  his  way  to 
Rome  to  obtain  the  pall,  he  was  frozen  to  death  on  the 
Alps.  Brithelm,  Bishop  of  Sherborne,  was  the  next 
nominated ;  but  before  he  was  consecrated,  the  king 
died,  and  his  nomination  being  thus  annulled,  Dunstan 
was  appointed  archbishop  by  the  new  king,  Edgar  ^. 
Edgar's  reign  (958 — 975)  was  one  of  great  glory  to  the 
country,  but  he  was  himself  a  man  of  licentious  and 
profligate  habits.  Dunstan  exercised  a  powerful  influ- 
ence over  him  ;  and  on  one  occasion,  in  consequence  of 
a  flagrant  crime  which  he  had  committed,  prohibited 
him  from  wearing  his  crown  for  seven  years.  By  Dun- 
stan's  advice  good  laws  were  made  for  the  people  by 
the  king  and  the  Witagemot,  and  through  him  about 
forty  monasteries  were  built  or  restored,  and  richly 

P  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  in  the  Acts  of  his  reign,  Edgar  styles  himself 
"Vicar  of  Christ  in  his  Realms."  This  shews  that  the  Pope  did  not  then 
possess  in  England  the  title  which  he  afterwards  claimed. 


122 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


endowed  %  At  Worcester  and  Winchester,  the  bishops, 
Oswald  and  Ethelwold,  and  also  the  bishops  of  some 
other  dioceses,  turned  out  all  those  who  refused  to 
become  monks ;  but  it  is  strange  that  in  his  own 
diocese  of  Canterbury  Dunstan  made  no  alteration, 
allowing  the  secular  clergy  to  remain  at  the  cathedral, 
whilst  the  monks  resided  at  St.  Augustine's  ;  nor  was 
any  attempt  made  to  dispossess  the  secular  canons 
until  the  primacy  of  Archbishop  Elfric. 

In  the  history  of  Dunstan  we  have  a  proof  that 
papal  interference  was  unrecognized  by  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  Church.  An  earl  of  considerable  influence  had 
contracted  an  incestuous  marriage,  and  Dunstan  ex- 
communicated him.  The  earl  appealed  first  to  the 
king,  and  then  to  Rome.  The  Pope  seized  the  oppor- 
tunity to  interfere,  and  wrote  and  ordered  Dunstan  to 
grant  him  absolution ;  Dunstan  refused  to  take  any 
notice  of  the  Pope's  interference  till  the  sin  was  aban- 
doned ^  The  sequel  of  the  story  shews  how  much 
better  a  spiritual  guide  Dunstan  was  than  the  Pope. 
Seeing  how  little  the  Archbishop  regarded  the  Pope's 
order,  the  nobleman  began  to  relent  :  he  abandoned 
his  unlawful  marriage,  took  the  habit  of  a  penitent,  and 
coming  to  the  Archbishop  bare-footed,  cast  himself 
at  his  feet,  and  asked  absolution.  St.  Dunstan  was 
softened,  but  for  the  penitent's  good  he  concealed 
his  feelings  for  a  time ;  but  when  he  could  refrain  no 
longer,  he  melted  into  tears,  and  granted  the  absolu- 
tion.   Dunstan  died  in  988. 

1  Amongst  these  were  the  old  foundations  of  Ely,  Peterborough, 
Tewkesbury,  Glastonbury,  Evesham,  Bath,  and  Abingdon ;  the  new 
abbeys  of  Ramsey,  Hunts;  Tavistock,  and  Milton  Abbot's,  Devon; 
Cerne  Abbot's,  Dorset ;  and  many  more.    (Churton,  p.  244.) 

'  This  is  such  an  evident  disregard  of  the  Pope,  that  Cardinal  Baronius 
is  at  a  loss  how  to  explain  it. 


THE  DANISH  INVASIONS. 


123 


Elfric,  an  abbot,«who  became  archbishop  in  995,  was 
as  staunch  a  promoter  of  monachism  as  Dunstan  had 
been ;  he  even  removed  the  secular  canons,  whom 
Dunstan  had  spared,  from  Canterbury  Cathedral ;  they 
were,  however,  restored  after  his  death.  Elfric,  who 
was  a  man  of  great  ability,  earned  a  foremost  rank  in 
the  literature  of  England,  as  the  author  of  two  books 
of  homilies,  selected  chiefly  from  such  authorities  as 
SS.  Augustine,  Jerome,  Gregory,  and  Bede,  and  which 
became  authoritative  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Church  ;  he 
also,  at  the  request  of  Wulfsy,  Bishop  of  Sherborne, 
wrote  a  summary  of  admonition,  resembling  an  epis- 
copal charge  of  the  present  day,  for  the  information  of 
the  clergy.  These  works  are  useful,  as  illustrating 
the  religious  opinions  of  that  time ;  they  shew  that 
although  the  veneration  of  relics  and  the  doctrine  of 
Purgatory  had  increased,  the  notion  of  Transubstan- 
tiation  had  not  been  received  in  the  Analo-Saxon 
Church,  and  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Eucharist 
was  the  same  then  as  now. 

Archbishop  Elfric  also  states  in  his  canons  that 
the  first  four  councils  are  to  be  regarded  as  the  four 
Gospels,  and  that  though  others  have  been  held 
since,  they  are  not  to  be  regarded  as  of  equal  au- 
thority. 

The  period  that  ensued,  from  the  death  of  Edgar 
to  the  Norman  Conquest,  was  one  of  great  calamity 
to  the  nation.  The  young  king,  Edward  (hence  sur- 
named  "the  Martyr"),  was  cruelly  murdered  by  his 
stepmother,  Elfrida,  the  mother  of  Ethelred  "  the  Un- 
ready," by  whom  he  was  succeeded.  Again  the  Danes 
invaded  the  kingdom ;  in  vain  Ethelred  induced  them, 
by  payment  of  money,  which  gave  rise  to  the  tax 
known  as  Danegeld,  to  retire.    This  was  the  worst 


124 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH, 


thing  he  could  have  done ;  for  again  and  again  the 
invaders,  induced  by  the  hope  of  money,  returned. 
In  one  of  these  invasions,  Canterbury,  betrayed  by 
the  abbot  of  St,  Augustine's,  was  captured,  the  ca- 
thedral destroyed,  and  Elphege,  who  had  succeeded 
Elfric  as  archbishop,  was  murdered. 

We  must  now  turn  to  another  body  of  Northmen, 
with  whom  the  history  of  the  English  Church  and 
nation  is  henceforward  so  closely  connected. 

Whilst  the  Danes  were  committing-  their  ravages 
in  England,  the  Normans  coming,  as  their  name  im- 
plies, from  the  north,  in  912,  under  their  leader  Rollo 
or  Rolf,  had  conquered  and  settled  in  that  part  of 
Gaul,  which  from  them  took  the  name  of  Normandy, 
and  there  founded  a  new  European  state.    At  that 
time  Rolf  and  his  followers  were  heathens ;  he  was, 
however,  before  long  baptized,  and  gradually  the 
Normans  became  Christians,  and  adopted  the  French 
customs  and  the  French  language.    For  some  time 
no  intercourse  was  held  between  the  people  of  Eng- 
land and  the  people  in  Normandy.    But,  a.d.  1002, 
Ethelred  the  Unready  married  Emma,  daughter  of 
Richard,  Duke  of  Normandy,  and  henceforward  the 
attention  of  the  Normans  became  directed  to  Eng- 
land.   But  now  Ethelred  committed  a  treacherous 
and  dastardly  act,  for  on  St.  Brice's  day,  a.d.  1002,  he 
caused  all  the  Danes  that  were  in  England,  without 
respect  of  station,  of  age  or  sex,  to  be  put  to  death  : 
even  the  Princess  Gunilda,  the  sister  of  the  King  of 
Denmark,  and  a  Christian,  after  seeing  her  husband 
and  children  murdered,  met  a  similar  fate  by  order  of 
Ethelred  himself.    This  wanton  cruelty  gave  Sweyne, 
King  of  Denmark,  an  excuse  for  again  invading  Eng- 
land ;  and,  arriving  with  his  son  Cnut  and  a  large 


THE  DANISH  INVASIONS. 


army,  he  soon  compelled  Ethelred,  and  his  wife  and 
two  sons,  to  seek  refuge  with  the  Duke  of  Normandy. 
In  1014  Sweyne  died,  and  Edmund  Ironside,  the  son 
of  Ethelred,  having  conquered  Cnut,  Ethelred  again 
became  king;  but  only  for  a  short  time,  for  a.d.  1016 
he  died,  and  Edmund  dying  soon  after,  the  people 
elected  Cnut,  who  married  Emma,  the  widow  of  Eth- 
elred, for  their  king.  Cnut  became  a  Christian,  and 
enjoyed  a  prosperous  reign  of  nearly  twenty  years. 
By  the  advice  of  Ethelnoth,  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury, he  sanctioned  a  code  of  laws  for  the  Church,  and 
founded  a  monastery  at  Essendon  :  he  was  also  the 
founder  and  munificent  benefactor  of  many  churches, 
as  also  the  restorer  of  the  monasteries  which  had  been 
injured  by  the  Danish  invasions  ;  and  amongst  his 
noblest  works  must  be  mentioned  the  foundation  of 
the  monastery  of  St.  Edmondsbury,  in  memory  of 
King  Edmund  ^  who  had  been  killed  by  the  Danes, 
in  870.  He  went  also  on  a  pilgrimage  to  Rome, 
and  during  this  visit  he  remonstrated  with  the  Pope 
on  account  of  the  great  expense  incurred  by  English 
archbishops  in  obtaining  the  pall  from  Rome ;  he  also 
added  to  the  glory  of  his  reign  by  the  conversion  of 
Denmark,  into  which  he  sent  missionary  bishops  from 
England. 

On  the  death  of  Cnut,  his  son  Harold,  by  his  first 
wife,  became  king,  but  dying  in  1040,  he  was  suc- 
ceeded by  Harthacnut,  Cnut's  son  by  Emma;  thus 
a  Norman  by  his  mother's  side  became  King  of  Eng- 
land. Harthacnut  died  a.d.  1042,  and  then  Edward 
the  Confessor  (the  son  of  Ethelred,  by  Emma),  who 
married  the  daughter  of  Godwin,  the  most  powerful 

•  St.  Edmund  was  fastened  to  a  tree,  and  after  being  unmercifully 
scourged  by  the  Danes,  he  was,  Hke  St.  Sebastian,  transfixed  with  spears. 


126 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


earl  in  England,  succeeded  to  the  throne.  Edward, 
a  good  and  pious  king,  but  more  suited  for  a  cloister 
than  a  throne,  and  a  devoted  servant  of  the  Pope,  had 
been  brought  up  all  his  life  in  Normandy ;  hence  he 
was  more  Norman  than  English ;  he  preferred  the 
French  language  ;  he  appointed  Normans  to  high 
stations  and  bishoprics  in  England ;  and  he  made 
Robert,  Abbot  of  Jumieges,  in  Normandy,  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury;  and  William,  another  Norman, 
Bishop  of  London ;  whilst  he  lived  on  intimate  terms 
with  his  cousin  William,  Duke  of  Normandy. 

But  the  appointment  of  Robert  to  the  see  of  Can- 
terbury was  more  than  the  nation  could  tolerate.  He 
had  been  appointed  Bishop  of  London,  a.d.  1044,  but 
in  order  to  keep  him  out  of  Canterbury,  the  chapter 
of  the  cathedral,  together  with  the  monks  of  St.  Au- 
gustine's, had  elected  ^Ifric,  a  relation  of  Earl  Godwin  ; 
this  they  had  done  without  the  conge  cfelirc,  so,  with- 
out taking  any  notice  of  their  election,  the  king  ap- 
pointed Robert.  The  country  was  for  a  time  in  re- 
bellion ;  soon,  however.  Earl  Godwin  regained  his  as- 
cendency with  the  king,  who,  by  the  advice  of  Stigand, 
summoned  the  Witagemot,  and  Robert  was  ban- 
ished. But  the  short  tenure  of  Robert's  primacy  was 
marked  by  the  increasing  influence  of  the  Pope  in 
England,  into  whose  hands  Robert  threw  all  the 
power  he  was  able.  And  now  Robert  appealed  to 
Rome, — the  only  English  bishop,  except  Wilfrid,  who 
had  ever  done  so ;  the  Pope,  of  course,  decided  in 
his  favour,  but  no  notice  was  taken  of  his  decision, 
and  Stigand  was  elected  archbishop.  Pope  Alex- 
ander always  refused  to  recognise  Stigand,  partly  be- 
cause he  still  considered  Robert  as  archbishop,  partly 
because  Stigand  had  received  the  pall  from  an  Anti- 


THE  DANISH  INVASIONS. 


127 


pope,  Benedict  X.,  who  was  afterwards  deposed.  Yet 
it  is  certain  that  Stigand  was  archbishop  for  nineteen 
years ;  that  he  was  acknowledged  by  Aldrid,  Arch- 
bishop of  York  ;  that  Wulfstan,  Bishop  of  Worcester, 
although  consecrated  by  Aldrid,  professed  canonical 
obedience  to  him ;  and  that  Stigand  signed  himself 
as  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  before  the  Archbishop 
of  York,  and  next  to  the  Royal  Family. 

Nothing  increased  the  influence  of  the  Pope  in 
England  more  than  the  foundation,  now  for  the  first 
time,  of  alien  priories.  These  priories,  filled  with 
Normans,  were  attached,  and  subjected,  not  to  Eng- 
lish monasteries,  but  to  abbeys  in  Normandy ;  thus 
English  property  was  handed  over  to  the  Norman 
Church  :  how  great  an  influence  this  added  to  the 
Normans,  may  be  judged  from  the  fact,  that  at  the 
death  of  Edward  the  Confessor,  one  third  of  the  land 
in  England  was  said  to  belong  to  ecclesiastical  bodies ; 
and  this  was  one  of  the  many  ways  in  which  the  in- 
terests of  his  cousin,  soon  to  become  its  conqueror, 
were  advanced  in  the  land.  At  this  time  William 
came  to  England  on  a  visit  to  the  king,  during  which 
it  is  supposed  that  Edward,  who  had  no  son  himself, 
made  him  a  promise,  which  William  pleaded  as  his 
title,  of  the  succession  to  the  throne.  This  of  course 
Edward,  without  the  consent  of  the  Witagemot, 
had  no  power  to  do,  especially  as  Edgar  Atheling, 
the  grandson  of  Edmond  Ironside,  was  the  rightful 
heir  to  the  throne.  Edward  just  lived  long  enough 
to  see  the  consecration  of  Westminster  Abbey,  which 
he  had  built  and  endowed  as  a  Benedictine  abbey, 
on  the  ruins  of  the  church  founded  by  Sebert,  King 
of  Essex,  when  he  died  a.d.  1066,  after  having,  it  is 
said,  repented  of  the  promise  he  had  made  to  William, 


128 


THE  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH. 


and  asked  the  Witagemot  to  elect  Harold,  the  son 
of  Earl  Godwin,  as  his  successor.  Harold  was  accord- 
ingly chosen  as  king ;  and  as  Archbishop  Stigand's 
title  to  the  primacy,  during  the  lifetime  of  Robert, 
was  considered  doubtful,  he  was  crowned  by  Aldrid, 
Archbishop  of  York.  The  battle  of  Senlac,  near 
Hastings,  soon  followed.  Many  circumstances  fa- 
voured William ;  the  Pope  approved  his  cause,  and 
sent  him  a  banner;  the  Normans  were  victorious,  and 
Harold  was  slain ;  and  though  the  Witagemot  at 
first  chose  Edgar  Atheling,  and  Stigand  anointed  him 
as  king,  William,  without  much  difficulty,  reached 
London,  where,  on  Christmas  Day,  a.d.  1066,  he  was 
acknowledged  king  of  the  English. 

A  great  revolution  was  effected  in  the  English  Church. 
The  whole  religious  life  of  the  country  was  changed. 
The  Normans  displaced  the  native,  and  appointed  in 
their  place  Norman  bishops ;  the  first  thing  the  new 
bishops  did  was  to  build,  or  rebuild,  their  cathedrals 
in  the  style  for  which  Normandy  is  so  renowned.  In 
their  own  country  the  Normans  had  adopted  the  style 
of  Roman  architecture ;  the  round  arch,  which  we  call 
Norman,  being  only  a  reproduction  of  the  old  Roman 
arch.  As  time  went  on,  the  taste  for  architecture  im- 
proved ;  the  heavier  style  of  the  Norman  buildings 
gave  place  to  the  lighter  style  of  the  Early  English, 
which  developed  by  degrees  into  the  Decorated  style ; 
but  it  is  to  the  Normans  that  we  are  mainly  in- 
debted for  the  noble  cathedrals  and  churches,  often 
the  churches  in  the  smallest  villages,  for  which  Eng- 
land is  so  distinguished. 

But  a  still  greater  change  ensued.  The  battle  of 
Senlac  was  considered  a  holy  battle.  Nowhere  was 
the  Church  more  submissive  to  the  Pope  than  in  Nor- 


THE  DANISH  INVASIONS. 


129 


mandy,  and  the  Normans  went  to  the  battle  with  his 
blessing ;  nowhere  was  the  Church  so  independent  as 
in  England.  Foreign  priests  joined  the  Norman  army, 
Odo,  Bishop  of  Bayeux,  and  half-brother  to  William, 
being  one  of  the  most  conspicuous  leaders ;  but  in 
England  the  clergy  did  all  they  could  to  stop  the  in- 
vasion ;  Alfwig,  Abbot  of  Winchester,  with  twelve  of 
his  monks,  fought  with  Harold,  and  were  killed  to 
a  man ;  many  others  amongst  the  clergy  shared  the 
same  fate ;  the  consequence  was,  that  William  came 
to  the  throne  with  no  kindly  feelings  to  the  English 
Church.  The  cause  of  the  Pope  in  England  was  ad- 
vanced, and  England  for  the  future  was  broug^ht  into 
closer  connection  with,  and  dependence  on,  the  see 
of  Rome. 


K 


PART  III. 

^be  Hnolo^morman  Cburcb. 


CHAPTER  I. 


LANFRANC  AND  WILLIAM  I. 


HE  Enorlish  seem  with  a  natural  aptitude  to  have 


acquired  the  vices  which  their  conquerors  brought 
with  them,  and  so  from  the  Danes  they  learnt  habits 
of  gluttony  and  drunkenness.  Unfortunately  they  not 
only  learnt  what  was  bad,  but  they  also  unlearned 
the  good  which  they  possessed  before.  William  of 
Malmesbury  draws  a  sad  picture  of  the  state  of  Eng- 
land at  the  time  of  the  Norman  Conquest.  "For 
a  time  after  the  people  became  Christian,"  he  says, 
"  they  shook  off  their  rough,  unpolished  manners, 
they  abandoned  their  fighting  propensities,  and  gave 
themselves  over  entirely  to  religion  ;  kings  and  queens 
exchanged  their  thrones  for  the  cloister ;  churches 
and  monasteries  were  built  and  richly  endowed,  and 
the  people  followed  the  example  set  them  by  their 
rulers.  But  all  this  had  changed.  The  higher 
classes  were  entirely  given  up  to  luxury  and  de- 
bauchery ;  instead  of  going  to  the  churches,  accord- 
ing to  Christian  custom,  they  would  lie  in  bed,  and 
hear  Matins  and  Mass  celebrated  at  their  bedside  by 
some  over-officious  priest.  The  poor  were  a  prey 
to  the  rich,  who,  after  having  seized  on  their  pos- 
sessions, sold  them  beyond  sea  as  slaves.  The 
monks  belied  their  professions  by  expensive  habits 
and  sumptuous  living.  The  learning  which  Dunstan 
had  for  a  time  revived,  had  again  died  out ;  the 


LANFRANC  AND  WILLIAM  I. 


clergy  were  sunk  in  ignorance ;  to  be  able  to  stam- 
mer out  the  service  was  considered  a  sufficient  qua- 
lification for  the  priesthood,  few  of  the  clergy  carried 
their  learning  further ;  and  any  one  who  had  a  know- 
ledge of  grammar  was  looked  upon  as  a  prodigy  of 
learning 

In  the  matter  of  civilization,  the  English  were 
certainly  gainers  by  the  Norman  Conquest.  The 
Normans  were  the  foremost  nation  of  Christendom, 
and  English  princes,  since  the  decadence  of  learn- 
ing in  England,  had  not  unfrequently  resorted  to 
Normandy  for  their  education ;  whilst  their  freedom 
from  that  intemperance  to  which  the  other  branches 
of  the  great  German  race  were  addicted,  formed  a 
striking  contrast  to  the  gluttony  and  drunkenness 
which  disgraced  their  Saxon  and  Danish  neighbours  ^ 

William,  no  doubt,  treated  the  English,  the  Church 
no  less  than  the  State,  with  great  severity ;  but  the 
opposition  he  met  with,  considering,  as  he  did,  that 
Har^d  had  been  a  usurper,  and  that  he  himself 
was  through  the  will  of  Edward  the  Confessor  the 
rightful  heir,  was  partly  an  excuse.  He  was  a  man 
of  iron  will,  and  with  a  heart  as  hard  as  stone ;  "  he 
was  very  stark,"  says  the  chronicle,  "towards  those 
who  withstood  his  will;"  yet  he  was  no  tyrant;  he 
was  "  a  very  wise  and  good  man,  mild  towards  those 
good  men  who  loved  God ;"  and,  says  Orderic  of 
him,  "  he  ever  loved  in  God's  servants  true  reli- 
gion." The  chief  opponents  of  William  were  the 
clergy ;  at  his  coronation  he  had  vowed  to  dispense 

'  "  Clerici  literaturi  tumultuaria  contenti,  vix  sacramentorum  verba 
balbutiebant ;  slupori  erat  et  miraculo  ca;teris  qui  grammaticam  nosset." 
—(Will,  of  Malm.  Lib.  iii.  245.) 
Macaulay,  vol.  i.  ch.  i. 

K  2 


132 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


equal  justice  to  all  his  subjects,  but  there  must  be 
no  resistance,  no  disloyalty :  he  was  a  strong  as- 
serter  of  the  Royal  supremacy,  and  regarded  him- 
self as  the  supreme  head  of  the  country,  in  eccle- 
siastical as  well  as  civil  matters  ;  bishop  and  baron 
enjoyed  like  privileges  in  the  land  over  which  he 
reigned,  and  therefore  from  both  alike  homage  was 
due.  But  the  clergy  opposed  him,  so  in  a  few 
years  scarcely  a  native  abbot,  or  a  native  bishop 
(Wulfstan,  Bishop  of  Worcester,  being  a  notable  ex- 
ception) was  to  be  found,  Normans  always  being 
appointed  in  their  stead ;  and  during  nearly  one 
hundred  years,  not  a  single  Englishman  was  ap- 
pointed to  any  high  station  in  the  Church.  How 
arbitrary  this  rule  of  William  was  considered  to  be, 
may  be  judged  from  the  fact  that  Guimond,  a  Nor- 
man, and  disciple  of  Lanfranc,  refused  an  English 
bishopric,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  unjust  in  William 
to  intrude  foreign  bishops  on  the  English  Church. 

It  must  be  confessed,  however,  that  in  some  re- 
spects William's  ecclesiastical  rule  was  judicious. 
"  Whenever  any  chief  pastor  died,"  says  Orderic, 
"he  caused  all  the  Church  possessions  to  be  in- 
ventoried, lest  they  should  be  wasted  by  irregular 
guardians.  Then  he  would  call  together  the  bishops 
and  abbots  and  wise  counsellors,  and  would  enquire 
of  the  fiftest  man  for  the  appointment ;  and  whoso- 
ever was  selected  by  the  wise  men,  the  king  would 
appoint  him  a  ruler  and  steward  of  the  bishopric 
or  abbey.  Simony  he  abhorred  ^  He  set  persons 
approved  for  their  character  over  the  monasteries 
in  England,  through  whom  the  monastic  life,  which 

'  Simony  attained  a  great  height  in  the  following  reigns  of  William  II. 
and  Henry  I. 


LANFRANC  AND  WILLIAM  I. 


had  somewhat  languished,  sprang  up  into  new  life." 
So  also  the  bishops  whom  he  appointed  were  men 
of  learning  and  piety ;  but  unfortunately  for  their 
episcopal  duties,  they  despised  the  English,  and 
scorned  to  speak  the  language  of  the  people  into 
whose  sees  they  had  been  thrust.  The  evil  conse- 
quence of  this  was,  that  whilst  hitherto  the  services 
had  been  performed  in  the  native  tongue,  hencefor- 
ward, till  the  Reformation,  they  were  performed  in 
Latin,  in  a  language  "  not  understanded  of  the 
people  ^" 

The  first  to  feel  his  severity  was  Stigand,  the 
archbishop.  The  ceremony  of  William's  consecra- 
tion had  been  performed  by  Aldrid,  Archbishop  of 
York ;  according  to  one  account,  because  Stigand 
refused  to  perform  it ;  according  to  another,  because 
William  refused  to  be  crowned  by  one  whom  he  did 
not  consider  the  rightful  archbishop,  who  had  received 
the  pall  from  an  Anti-pope,  and  held  his  see  in  defiance 
of  the  reigning  Pope,  Alexander  II.  Stigand  had 
shewed  his  opposition  to  William  by  exciting  the 
men  of  Kent  into  a  rebellion  against  him  ;  he  was 
also  a  pluralist,  holding  together  the  sees  of  Canter- 
bury and  Winchester,  and  this  no  doubt  offended 
William,  who  was  a  strict  disciplinarian.  So  Stigand 
must  be  deposed.  But  how  was  this  to  be  effected  ? 
It  would  be  a  tyrannical  commencement  of  his  reign 
to  depose  the  archbishop  by  his  own  personal  will, 
nor  could  he  trust  a  synod  composed  of  Englishmen 
to  depose  their  own  primate.  He  therefore  applied 
to  the  Pope,  or  to  Hildebrand,  who  was  then  virtu- 
ally Pope;  Hildebrand  was  only  too  glad  to  inter- 


Art.  xxiv. 


134 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


fere  ;  he  put  forward  a  claim  for  the  Church  of  Rome 
\vhich  was  never  at  any  time  allowed,  "the  Church 
of  Rome  has  the  right  to  superintend  all  Christians''^ 
Ermenfrid,  Bishop  of  Sion,  arrived  as  the  papal  le- 
gate ;  Stigand  and  all  the  bishops  who  opposed  William 
were  deposed,  and  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury- 
ended  his  days  in  a  prison  at  Winchester^. 

One  reason  assigned  for  deposing  the  English 
bishops  was  ignorance  of  the  French  language. 
Old  Bishop  Wulfstan  of  Worcester,  one  of  the  best 
and  most  religious  of  them,  was  indebted  to  his 
holy  simplicity  for  being  allowed  to  hold  his  see 
both  under  William  I.  and  William  II.  He  was 
summoned  to  a  synod  at  Westminster,  and  when 
ordered  to  give  up  his  bishop's  staff,  he  gently  re- 
plied, "  I  confess  I  am  not  worthy  of  the  dignity, 
nor  sufficient  for  its  duties.  I  knew  it  when  the 
clergy  elected  me,  when  the  prelates  forced  it  upon 
me,  and  my  master  summoned  me  to  the  office." 
He  was  willing  to  obey  the  council,  and  surrender 
the  staff,  but  not  to  the  council  who  had  not  given 
it  to  him,  but  to  Edward  the  Confessor.  Then 
advancing  to  his  tomb,  and  invoking  the  king  whom 
both  Normans  and  English  regarded  as  a  saint,  he 
said,  "  Master,  thou  knowest  how  unwillingly  I  took 
upon  myself  this  charge ;  ...  to  thee,  therefore,  I  re- 
sign the  charge  which  I  never  sought."  He  then  laid 
the  crozier  on  his  tomb.  Such  an  invocation  of  a  dead 
saint  was  regarded  as  an  awful  thing.    No  one  dared 

'  Wilkins'  Concilia,  i.  323. 

'  If  William  was  arbitrary,  he  was  fair  in  his  dealings.  He  deposed 
his  own  uncle,  Malger,  Archbishop  of  Rouen,  who  employed  his  time  in 
secular  amusements,  and  replaced  him  by  Mauritius,  a  man  of  very  dif- 
ferent stamp. 


LANFRANC  AND  WILLIAM  I. 


take  up  the  staff.  A  legend  stated  that  no  one  could 
take  it  up,  and  that  it  adhered  to  the  altar ;  till  Wulf- 
stan,  at  the  command  of  William,  took  it  himself,  and 
remained  Bishop  of  Worcester,  the  cathedral  church  of 
which  he  built,  till  his  death,  a.d.  1095,  at  the  age  of 
eighty-eight. 

William  made  use  of  the  Pope  when  he  required  his 
countenance  for  depriving  the  English  bishops,  but  he 
would  not  sacrifice  the  independence  of  his  kingdom, 
as  the  Pope  had  hoped  ;  and  he  was  the  only  king  in 
Europe  who  could  hold  his  own  against  Gregory  VII. 
He  would  not  allow  any  papal  letters  to  be  received 
into  the  kingdom,  nor  (which  was  very  necessary  when 
there  was  frequently  more  than  one  Pope  at  a  time) 
any  Pope  to  be  acknowledged  without  his  approval. 
Gregory  demanded  of  him  that  he  should  do  fealty  for 
his  kingdom,  and  pay  the  arrears  of  Peter-pence  :  this 
last  was  an  unfounded  claim,  for  Peter-pence  had 
never  been  paid  as  a  tax,  but  only  as  a  free  gift  ; 
still  the  money  he  was  willing  to  give,  not  as  a  tribute, 
but  an  alms  ;  the  fealty  he  refused,  because  he  had 
never  promised  it,  and  his  predecessors  had  never  given 
it ;  he  would  ask  the  Pope's  prayers,  "  because  we 
have  loved  your  predecessors,  and  you  above  all  we 
desire  to  love  sincerely,  and  listen  to  obediently." 
Gregory  was  very  profuse  in  his  compliments ;  he 
spoke  of  William  as  greatly  superior  to  all  the  other 
monarchs  of  the  age  :  still  at  one  time  he  seemed  in- 
clined to  try  his  strength  against  him.  He  declared 
that  money  without  obedience  was  useless  ;  he  hinted 
at  the  king's  treating  him  with  disrespect,  and  charged 
his  legate  to  threaten  William  with  the  wrath  of 
St.  Peter  unless  he  repented,  and  to  order  the  at- 
tendance of  the  English  and  Norman  bishops  at  a 


136  THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 

synod  at  Rome.  No  notice  was  taken  of  the  ci- 
tation, and  the  Pope  was  wise  enough  to  let  the 
matter  drop. 

Another  occasion  when  William  asserted  his  inde- 
pendence, was  with  regard  to  clerical  celibacy.  Hilde- 
brand  had  issued  a  decree  against  clerical  marriages, 
with  excommunication  against  those  clergy  who  re- 
tained their  wives,  and  forbidding  the  laity  to  accept 
their  ministrations.  A  synod  held  at  Winchester, 
A.D.  1076,  refused  to  go  such  lengths  ;  and  a  canon 
of  that  council  enacted  that  for  the  future  bishops 
should  enforce  celibacy ;  but  for  the  present,  only 
those  attached  to  colleges  and  cathedrals  should  be 
obliged  to  put  away  their  wives. 

One  of  the  most  important,  but  at  the  same  time 
the  least  clear-sighted  acts,  and  fraught  with  danger  in 
after  times,  of  his  reign,  was  the  separation  of  the 
ecclesiastical  from  the  civil  courts.  In  former  times, 
the  bishop  and  ealdormen  had  sat  in  the  same  courts, 
the  former  presiding  in  ecclesiastical,  the  latter  in  civil 
causes,  each  giving  the  other  the  weight  of  his  autho- 
rity. But  William  set  up  courts  for  the  bishops  and 
archdeacons,  before  which  all  ecclesiastical  causes  were 
to  be  tried,  according  to  the  canons  and  the  ecclesias- 
tical law,  disobedience  to  which  was  to  be  punished 
by  excommunication.  He  little  thought  of  the  troubles 
that  this  change  was  soon  to  effect  between  the  clergy 
and  the  crown. 

William's  chief  adviser,  whom  he  appointed  to  suc- 
ceed Stigand  as  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  was  Lan- 
franc,  an  Italian.  Lanfranc  was  born  at  Pavia,  a.d. 
1005,  the  son  of  the  keeper  of  the  public  archives; 
and  being  left  an  orphan  at  an  early  age,  he  sought 
his  livelihood  by  teaching,  first  in  Italy,  then  in  France, 


LANFRANC  AND  WILLIAM  I. 


and  afterwards  at  Avranches  in  Normandy,  where  he 
conducted  a  school  with  great  success  ;  WilHam,  who 
was  then  Duke  of  Normandy,  being  a  great  patron  of 
literature.  On  his  road  from  Avranches  to  Rouen, 
A.D.  1 04 1,  he  was  attacked  by  robbers  in  a  forest  near 
the  abbey  of  Bee,  tied  to  a  tree,  and  left  in  this  con- 
dition for  a  day  and  a  night.  The  next  morning,  his 
cries  for  help  were  heard  by  some  travellers  :  of  them 
he  enquired  the  way  to  the  nearest  monastery,  and  was 
directed  to  Bee.  On  his  road  thither,  he  met  a  man 
in  old  and  torn  garments,  and  uncombed  and  dis- 
hevelled hair.  This  was  no  other  than  the  abbot, 
Herluin,  who,  a  man  of  noble  birth,  had  built  the 
abbey  upon  his  own  estate.  Herluin  asked  him  what 
he  wanted  :  "  To  be  a  monk,"  was  the  reply.  Lanfranc 
was  then  conducted  to  Bee,  where  the  fame  of  his 
teaching  at  Avranches  had  preceded  him.  The  princes 
and  nobles  of  the  land  flocked  to  study  under  the  fa- 
mous master ;  the  buildings  were  obliged  to  be  en- 
larged ;  Herluin  retained  the  office  of  abbot,  and 
Lanfranc  became  the  prior  of  the  monastery,  from 
which  emanated  three  Archbishops  of  Canterbury. 

It  was  here  that  he  gained  the  affection  of  William, 
which  was  soon,  however,  to  be  interrupted.  William 
had  contracted  a  marriage  with  his  cousin  Matilda, 
daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Flanders,  which  Lanfranc  op- 
posed. William  tried  to  gain  Lanfranc  over,  but  in 
vain ;  so  he  ordered  him  to  leave  his  kingdom.  The 
king  thought  the  monastery  of  Bee  a  rich  one,  whereas 
it  was  very  poor  :  it  only  possessed  one  horse.  Lan- 
franc, riding  on  this  animal,  which  soon  fell  dead  lame, 
and  attended  only  by  one  servant,  was  proceeding 
slowly  to  Rouen.  William,  who  expected  to  find  him 
travelling,  as  was  the  custom  of  the  times,  in  state, 


138 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


and  attended  with  a  retinue  of  servants,  met  him,  and 
complained  that  he  was  so  slow  in  executing  his 
orders,  "  Give  me  a  better  horse,"  said  Lanfranc, 
"and  I  shall  go  quicker."  William  appreciated  the 
joke ;  and  from  that  event  dates  the  commencement 
of  Lanfranc's  great  influence  over  William. 

Although  opposed  to  William's  marriage,  Lanfranc 
considered  that  a  dispensing  power  rested  with  the 
Pope,  and  thither  he  repaired  to  arrange  terms.  He 
stipulated  at  Rome  that  William  and  Matilda  should 
erect  and  endow  two  abbeys  and  four  hospitals  :  and 
thus  were  built  the  abbeys  of  St.  Stephen,  of  which 
he  became  abbot,  a.d.  1066,  and  of  the  Holy  Trinity  at 
Caen ;  and  the  hospitals  of  Rouen,  Caen,  Cherbourg, 
and  Bayeux. 

In  1067,  William  offered  him  the  Archbishopric 
of  Rouen,  which  he  refused  ;  and  a.d.  1070,  passing 
over  his  own  brother  Odo,  the  Bishop  of  Bayeux,  who 
expected  the  appointment,  that  of  Canterbury.  This 
post  also,  although  pressed  by  the  king  and  queen 
Matilda  to  accept  it,  he  again  and  again  refused  ;  till, 
at  the  request  of  the  Pope,  which  he  considered  equiva- 
lent to  a  command,  he  at  length  accepted  it,  and  was 
consecrated  in  a  shed  at  Canterbury,  upon  the  site  of 
the  cathedral,  which,  a  few  years  before,  had  been 
destroyed  by  fire. 

After  his  return  from  Rome,  whither  he  had  gone 
to  obtain  the  pall  ^  he,  with  the  king's  approval,  in- 
sisted on  the  restoration  of  the  Church  lands  and 

^  Lanfranc,  in  consequence  of  work  which  required  his  presence  in 
England,  asked  that  the  pall  might  be  sent  him;  but  Hildebrand,  w'ho, 
though  then  only  Archdeacon  at  Rome,  managed  the  affairs  of  Pope 
Alexander  IL,  insisted  on  his  attendance  ;  he  told  him  that  if  it  could  be 
done  for  any  one,  it  should  be  done  for  him,  but  the  journey  to  Rome 
was  indispensable. 


LANFRANC  AND  WILLIAM  I, 


manors  which  the  Norman  barons  had  seized,  and 
instituted  proceedings  against  Odo,  who  had  admin- 
istered the  see  of  Canterbury  after  the  deposition  of 
Stigand,  and  who  had  laid  claim  to  certain  manors 
belonging  to  the  archbishopric,  on  pretence  that  they 
devolved  upon  him  as  Earl  of  Kent. 

The  wealth  which  he  reclaimed  for  his  see  Lanfranc 
expended  nobly.  He  rebuilt  the  cathedral  with  stone 
brought  from  the  quarries  of  Caen ;  he  founded  and 
endowed  two  hospitals  near  Canterbury,  and  devoted 
immense  sums  of  money  to  religious  uses ;  and  he 
assisted  Paul,  a  monk  at  Caen,  whom  he  had  ap- 
pointed Abbot  of  St.  Alban's,  to  rebuild  the  abbey  in 
that  city  with  great  magnificence. 

Lanfranc  was  of  too  independent  spirit  to  please 
Hildebrand,  who  had  now  become  Pope  Gregory  VII. 
Gregory  wrote  him  a  letter,  complaining  that  though 
he  had  often  ordered  him  to  Rome,  yet,  either  through 
pride  or  negligence,  and  without  assigning  any  canoni- 
cal reason,  he  had  never  gone  there.  He  therefore 
now  ordered  him  to  make  no  excuses,  but  to  go  to 
Rome  within  four  months ;  if  not,  he  should  be  sev- 
ered from  the  grace  of  St.  Peter,  and  suspended  from 
his  episcopal  office.  Lanfranc,  however,  did  not  go, 
and  the  time  had  not  yet  arrived  when  even  Gregory 
dare  carry  out  his  threat  in  England. 

Yet  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  primacy  of  Lanfranc 
brought  the  English  Church  into  nearer  conformity 
with  Rome.  Lanfranc,  having  been  himself  a  monk, 
had  naturally  a  great  preference  for  the  monastic  life  ; 
he  drew  up  a  collection  of  rules  for  the  Benedictine 
monks  whom  he  had  established  at  Canterbury  ;  he 
was  also  a  strong  advocate  for  clerical  celibacy,  which, 
although  it  stopped  far  short  of  the  idea  of  Hilde- 


140 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


brand,  during  his  primacy  made  some  advance  in  Eng- 
land, and  was  carried  further  by  his  successor,  Anselm. 

Lanfranc  taught  (and  he  was  probably  the  first  who 
did  so  in  England)  the  Roman  doctrine  of  Transub- 
stantiation  in  the  Eucharist,  which,  though  introduced 
by  Paschasius  Radbert,  had  not  in  Lanfranc's  time  be- 
come a  dogma  in  any  branch  of  the  Catholic  Church. 
Berenger,  Archdeacon  of  Angers,  had  taught  that  the 
"  Holy  Bread  on  the  Altar  is  the  Body  of  Christ,  but 
that  it  is  still  Bread  after  consecration."  At  first, 
Gregory  VII.  wished  to  leave  it  an  open  question,  but, 
A.D.  1078  and  1079,  he  held  two  synods  at  Rome,  in 
both  of  Avhich  Berenger  was  obliged  to  subscribe  to 
the  doctrine  of  Transubstantiation.  To  refute  his 
opinions,  Lanfranc  wrote  a  treatise  expressly  against 
Berenger,  in  which  he  asserted  that  the  earthly  sub- 
stances, by  consecration,  are  turned  into  the  substance 
of  the  Lord's  Body,  though  the  appearances  of  the 
things  themselves,  and  some  other  qualities,  remain. 

Several  changes,  of  more  or  less  importance,  were 
made  during  his  primacy.  In  a  synod  held  in  London, 
A.D.  1075,  amongst  other  matters  it  was  enacted  that 
the  Holy  Eucharist,  which  had  sometimes  been  ad- 
ministered in  beer,  and  sometimes  in  water,  should 
for  the  future  be  administered  in  wine  mixed  with 
water ;  and  that  the  wooden  communion-tables,  which 
had  been  used  in  Saxon  churches,  should  be  con- 
verted into  stone  altars 

Another  matter  of  importance  was  the  removal  of 
several  sees  from  villages  to  cities.  In  1075,  Sher- 
borne and  Ramsbury  were  removed  to  Old  Sarum 
(afterwards,  a.d.  12 19,  to  Salisbury);  Selsey  to  Chi- 

In  the  Primitive  Church,  St.  Athanasius  is  a  witness  that  either 
wooden  or  stone  altars  were  used  indifferently. 


LANFRANC   AND  WILLIAM  I. 


141 


Chester;  Lichfield  to  Chester  (afterwards,  a.d.  1095, 
to  Coventry)  ;  Elmham  to  Thetford  (afterwards  to 
Norwich,  1094) ;  Wells  to  Bath ;  and  in  the  next 
reign,  Dorchester  to  Lincoln. 

A  great  improvement  (the  happy  result  of  an  un- 
happy riot  in  the  monastery  of  Glastonbury)  was  the 
establishment  of  a  uniform  Liturgy  for  the  whole 
kingdom,  each  bishop  or  abbot  having  hitherto  ar- 
ranged the  rubrics  in  the  Church  services  for  his  own 
diocese  or  monastery.  Thurstan,  the  wrong-headed 
Norman  Abbot  of  Glastonbury,  after  having,  in  order 
to  enrich  himself,  starved  the  monks  (treatment  which 
they  patiently  endured),  at  last  determined  to  deprive 
them  of  their  long-used  service-books,  and  to  intro- 
duce a  new  kind  of  church-music.  The  monks  re- 
fused to  obey  him  any  longer,  and  took  refuge  in  the 
church.  Thurstan  called  in  to  his  help  the  Norman 
archers  :  these,  first  ascending  to  the  gallery  of  the 
church,  poured  upon  the  monks  a  volley  of  arrows ; 
then,  attacking  the  defenceless  monks  in  the  church 
itself,  they  killed  two  of  them  :  in  vain  the  monks, 
flying  to  the  altar,  defended  themselves  as  best  they 
could  with  the  candlesticks  and  ornaments  of  the 
church,  and  one  with  the  crucifix.  The  figure  of  our 
Lord  being  pierced  by  an  arrow,  forthwith,  as  the  chro- 
nicler relates,  there  miraculously  flowed  blood.  Besides 
the  two  killed,  fourteen  monks  were  wounded.  The 
abbot  was  punished,  but  there  was  a  more  important 
result ;  to  prevent  such  a  recurrence,  one  uniform  use, 
the  Salisbury  missal  and  manual,  was  drawn  up  by 
Osmund,  Bishop  of  Old  Sarum  (1078 — 1099),  the 
same  which  existed  to  the  Reformation,  which  was 
then  made  the  ground-work  of  our  present  Book  of 
Common  Prayer. 


142 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


At  the  commencement  of  his  primacy,  Lanfranc 
demanded,  and  Thomas  the  Norman  Archbishop  of 
York,  refused  to  pay  him  canonical  obedience.  The 
question  of  precedence  between  the  two  archbishops, 
which  has,  at  various  times  since,  been  a  matter  of 
dispute,  was  settled  in  the  synod  of  London,  a.d.  1075. 
It  was  then  determined  that  the  Archbishop  of  York 
should  be  subject  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
in  things  pertaining  to  religion ;  that  next  to  the  two 
archbishops,  should  rank  the  Bishops  of  London  and 
Winchester,  and  after  them,  other  bishops,  according 
to  the  date  of  their  consecration. 

In  1087  William  I.  died,  having  requested  Lan- 
franc to  anoint  his  second  son,  William,  surnamed 
Rufus  (although  the  Norman  barons  preferred  his 
eldest  son,  Robert),  as  king.  Lanfranc  only  lived  two 
years  longer,  during  which  matters  went  on  quietly  ; 
and  it  is  one  of  the  strongest  testimonies  to  the  power 
of  Lanfranc,  that  for  two  years  that  licentious  and 
avaricious  king,  William  II.,  who  had  no  regard  for 
religion,  and  whose  one  object  was  to  plunder  the 
Church  as  much  as  he  could,  was  kept  under  control 
from  respect  to  his  character. 


CHAPTER  II. 


ANSELM,   AND  WILLIAM   II.   AND  HENRY  I. 

WILLIAM  RUFUS,  who  inherited  from  his  father 
•  •  his  exalted  notions  of  kingly  dignity,  and  of  his 
supreme  rights  over  all  persons  and  things,  as  well  ec- 
clesiastical as  civil,  chose  as  his  chief  adviser  Ranulph, 
surnamed  the  Flambard  ('  Firebrand '),  an  unprincipled 
man,  whom  he  afterwards  made  Bishop  of  Durham. 
Ranulph  pretended  that  on  the  death  of  a  bishop  or 
abbot,  the  revenues  lapsed  to  the  king,  to  be  held  by 
him  until  his  successor  was  appointed :  so  he  let  the 
lands  of  the  Church  to  the  highest  bidders,  in  order 
that  they  might  extort  from  the  oppressed  tenants  as 
much  money  as  possible.  After  the  death  of  Lanfranc, 
the  see  of  Canterbury  was  kept  vacant  for  four  years, 
till  the  king  thinking  himself  at  the  point  of  death, 
and  repenting  of  his  rapacity,  appointed  Anselm,  a.d. 
1093,  ^vho  like  Lanfranc  was  an  Italian,  but  happened 
at  the  time  to  be  in  England.  In  his  primacy  the 
struggle  between  the  spiritual  and  temporal  powers, 
between  the  Church  and  State,  which  had  been  averted 
during  the  primacy  of  Lanfranc,  was  imported  from 
the  Continent  into  England.  On  the  Continent,  Pope 
and  Emperor  had  been  joined  together  in  a  death 
struggle  for  preeminence.  The  two  powers  had  grown 
together  with  conflicting  relations,  and  with  no  defined 
limits  of  sovereignty  and  subjection  ;  the  one  claimed 
to  itself  the  title  of  Head  of  the  Church,  the  Vicar  of 
Christ ;  the  other  of  successor  of  the  Csesars,  of  Au- 
gustus, Constantine,  and  Charlemagne ;  each  acknow- 
ledged in  a  certain  degree  the  supremacy  of  the  other, 


144 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


but  it  was  a  subjection  of  jealousy,  for  whilst  each 
accorded  the  minimum  to  the  other,  he  claimed  the 
maximum  to  himself  ^  Of  this  struggle  the  English 
Church  was  now  to  become  the  battle-ground. 

Anselm,  a  man  of  noble  birth,  was  born  at  Aosta, 
A.D.  1033.  His  father,  Gundulph,  died  when  he  was 
young,  leaving  Anselm  a  large  inheritance.  For  a 
time  he  was  perplexed  which  he  should  follow,  the 
world  or  the  Church  ?  He  put  himself  into  Lanfranc's 
hands,  who  commended  him  to  the  Archbishop  of 
Rouen  :  by  his  advice  he  became  a  monk  at  Bee  at 
the  age  of  twenty-seven,  of  which  Herluin,  the  founder, 
was  still  abbot,  Lanfranc  being  prior ;  three  years 
afterwards,  when  Lanfranc  was  removed  to  Caen,  he 
succeeded  him  in  his  post ;  fifteen  years  later,  on  the 
death  of  Herluin,  he  became  Abbot  of  Bee,  which  post 
he  held  for  fifteen  years  longer,  gaining  for  himself 
a  reputation  for  learning  superior  even  to  Lanfranc, 
or  of  any  theological  teacher  since  St.  Augustine  of 
Hippo,  when  he  succeeded  Lanfranc  as  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury. 

A  man  of  his  amiable  and  gentle  spirit  was  ill-suited 
to  cope  with  the  rough  temper  of  Rufus ;  and  there- 
fore, as  he  knew  the  character  of  the  king,  he  was  un- 
willing to  accept  the  proffered  see ;  "  it  was  like 
yoking,"  he  said,  "a  feeble  old  sheep  with  a  wild  bull." 
In  vain  the  people  begged  him  to  accept  it;  he  was 
dragged  into  the  king's  presence,  who  entreated  him 
with  tears  in  his  eyes,  promising  at  the  same  time  to 
restore  the  property  of  his  see,  and  to  follow  his 
advice  in  matters  of  religion  ;  the  bishops  present  even 
thrust  the  crozier  into  his  hands  j  he  at  length  reluc- 


•  Milman's  Lat.  Christ. 


ANSELM,  AND  WILLIAM  II.   AND  HENRY  I.        1 45 

tantly  accepted,  and  did  homage  to  the  king  for  his 
temporalities. 

Flambard  soon  began  to  throw  difficulties  in  An- 
selm's  way ;  the  first  was  a  matter  touching  the  royal 
prerogative ;  which,  if  of  little  consequence,  boded  ill 
for  the  future,  but  it  did  not  prevent  Anselm's  conse- 
cration in  December,  1093.  At  the  commencement, 
however,  a  slight  contretemps  occurred,  through  an  ob- 
jection from  the  Archbishop  of  York.  In  the  act  of 
election,  the  cathedral  of  Canterbury  was  styled  "  the 
metropolitan  church  of  all  Britain."  "  But  if  this  is  so," 
interrupted  the  Archbishop  of  York,  "  the  church  of 
York  is  not  a  metropolitan  church.  It  must  be 
written,  the  Primacy  of  all  Britain."  So  Anselm  was 
consecrated  Primate  of  all  England. 

The  next  grievance  was  that  Anselm  being  required 
according  to  the  law  to  give  a  "  relief"  on  his  suc- 
cession, offered  only  five  hundred  pounds ;  the  king 
had  expected  a  thousand  pounds,  and  refused  the  do- 
nation; Anselm  then  distributed  the  money  in  alms 
amongst  the  poor. 

But  these  were  small  matters ;  the  real  troubles 
were  now  to  begin.  Anselm  proposed  to  go  to  Rome 
to  receive  the  pall.  "  From  which  Pope  ?"  asked  the 
king.  "  From  Urban,"  Anselm  replied.  For  another 
schism  had  broken  out  in  the  papacy ;  again  there 
were  two  Popes,  each  excommunicating  the  other, — Odo, 
Bishop  of  Ostia,  reigning  in  the  Lateran  Palace,  under 
the  title  of  Urban  II.;  and  Guibert,  Archbishop  of  Ra- 
venna, in  the  castle  of  St.  Angelo,  under  that  of  Clement 
III.  As  yet  England  had  given  its  allegiance  to  nei- 
ther, nor  would  either  the  king  or  his  father  allow  any 
Pope  to  be  recognised  without  their  permission  :  but 
Anselm,  when  Abbot  of  Bee,  had  given  his  allegiance 

L 


146 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


to  Urban,  and  still  continued  it  now  that  he  had  be- 
come Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 

William  consented  to  a  council  being  held  at  Rock- 
ingham on  Midlent  Sunday,  a.d.  1095,  to  deliberate 
on  the  matter,  at  which  the  bishops,  abbots,  nobles, 
and  many  others  of  the  clergy  and  laity  were  present. 
The  result  was  that  nearly  all  the  bishops  and  abbots 
in  subservience  to  the  kingr  renounced  obedience  to 
the  archbishop,  although  the  nobles  refused  to  follow 
their  example  ;  and  the  Bishop  of  Durham  threatened 
to  impeach  the  archbishop  for  high  treason,  if  he  did 
not  renounce  Urban. 

In  the  meantime,  the  king  had  sent  two  ecclesiastics 
to  Rome,  to  learn  which  of  the  rival  Popes  was  the 
stronger  and  more  compliant,  and  without  mentioning 
on  whom  the  klngr  meant  to  confer  it,  to  obtain  from 
the  Pope  the  archbishop's  pall.  They  found  that 
Urban  was  in  possession  at  Rome,  and  only  too  glad 
of  any  pretence  to  oblige  the  king  of  England  ;  Urban 
sent  off  the  Bishop  of  Albano  with  the  pall  to  William 
as  a  special  privilege,  although,  when  the  legate  was 
asked  by  the  king  to  depose  Anselm,  he  answered 
that  that  was  impossible.  The  legate  succeeded,  how- 
ever, in  bringing  the  archbishop  and  the  king  together  : 
the  king  received  Anselm  so  cordially  at  Windsor, 
that  the  legate  in  the  fulness  of  his  heart  exclaimed, 
"  Behold,  how  good  and  pleasant  a  thing  it  is,  brethren, 
to  dwell  together  in  unity."  The  king  had  intended 
to  confer  the  pall  with  his  own  hands ;  but  Anselm 
refused  to  receive  from  a  secular  person  what  his  pre- 
decessors had  been  accustomed  to  receive  from  the 
Pope  himself ;  the  papal  legate  with  consummate  skill 
devised  a  middle  course ;  the  pall  was  placed  by  him 
on  the  high  altar  at  Canterbury,  from  which  Anselm, 


ANSELM,  AND  WILLIAM  II.  AND  HENRY  I.        1 47 

barefooted,  took  it  and  invested  himself,  thus  claiming 
to  receive  it  from  the  hand  of  St.  Peter. 

Peace  was  now  restored,  but  only  for  a  short  time. 
Troubles  soon  again  commenced,  and  Anselm  deter- 
mined to  seek  refuge  in  Rome  ;  the  king  refused,  but 
at  last  consented,  to  let  him  go,  and  Anselm  departed, 
having  first  given  the  king  his  blessing,  in  the  guise 
of  a  pilgrim.  This  was  their  last  meeting,  and  the 
king  confiscated  the  archbishopric. 

Anselm  was  received  with  every  mark  of  honour  by 
Urban,  who  declared  he  ought  to  be  treated  as  an 
equal,  "  as  Pope  and  Patriarch  of  another  world."  At 
the  same  time,  Urban  was  afraid  of  offending  William 
by  entertaining  Anselm  as  his  guest ;  so  he  persuaded 
him  to  remove  into  the  country.  He  was  soon,  how- 
ever, requested  by  the  Pope  to  attend  the  Council 
of  Bari,  a.d.  1098.  The  question  arose  about  the 
re-union  of  the  Latin  and  Greek  Churches,  and  the 
Pope  tried  to  reason  against  the  Greeks,  who  were 
present,  on  the  procession  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  He 
was,  however,  unequal  to  the  task ;  and  then  called 
upon  Anselm  to  undertake  the  duty.  His  learning 
had  the  desired  effect,  and  the  decision  in  favour  of 
the  Latin  doctrine  was  unanimous.  The  Pope,  who 
had  before  wavered  between  William  and  Anselm, 
now  filled  with  admiration,  turned  from  the  Greek 
to  the  English  Church ;  he  brought  before  the  synod 
the  irreligious  and  tyrannical  life  of  the  king,  his 
simony,  and  his  unjust  treatment  of  such  a  man  as 
Anselm;  and  with  the  assent  of  the  assembly,  he 
was  about  to  pronounce  his  anathema,  when  Anselm, 
falling  on  his  knees,  averted  it. 

The  Pope  and  Anselm  had  both  written  to  the  king 
to  demand  a  restitution  of  Anselm's  property.    As  to 

L  2 


148       .  THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 

Anselm's  messengers,  William  threatened  to  tear  out 
their  eyes  if  they  did  not  immediately  leave  the  king- 
dom. To  the  Pope  he  sent  William  of  Warelwast, 
one  of  his  own  chaplains.  At  first  the  Pope  threat- 
ened to  excommunicate  the  king,  if  he  did  not  rein- 
state Anselm ;  the  messenger,  however,  brought  with 
him  a  large  sum  of  money  as  a  bribe  ^ ;  the  Pope 
relented,  and  the  excommunication  of  the  king  was 
never  issued. 

A  general  feeling  of  indignation  prevailed  at  the 
Pope's  treatment  of  Anselm.  Another  synod  was  con- 
vened, on  the  24th  April,  1099,  which  was  attended  by 
one  hundred  and  twenty  bishops,  chiefly  from  Italy 
and  France.  On  the  next  day,  Anselm,  seeing  that 
the  Pope  had  no  intention  to  assist  him,  left  Rome, 
and  repaired  to  Lyons  ;  the  Pope  contented  himself 
with  issuing  a  sentence  of  excommunication,  which 
Rufus  cared  little  for,  against  all  those  who  should 
receive  investiture  from  a  layman. 

Such  was  the  state  of  things  when  Urban,  dying 
on  the  29th  July  of  the  same  year,  was  succeeded  by 
Paschal  II. ;  and  Rufus,  dying  the  same  year,  was  suc- 
ceeded by  his  younger  brother  Henry,  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  the  elder  brother  Robert,  who  was  absent  on 
a  Crusade.  Henry,  under  a  less  rough  exterior,  in- 
herited, like  Rufus,  all  his  father's  harshness  and  stub- 
bornness ;  in  a  moral  point  of  view,  he  was  as  un- 
principled and  unscrupulous  as  his  brother,  but  being 
a  usurper,  it  was  his  interest  to  conciliate.  He  there- 
fore promised  to  remedy  all  the  abuses  of  the  former 
reign ;  he  wrote  down  on  paper  his  promises  to  govern 

William  of  Malmesbury  says  :  "  Money  prevailed,  as  it  always  does. 
I  blush  to  record  it,  that  in  so  great  a  man,  I  speak  of  Urban,  self-respect 
and  zeal  for  God  had  fallen  so  low  that  he  perverted  justice  for  money."  , 


ANSELM,  AND  WILLIAM  II.   AND  HENRY  I.        1 49 

according  to  the  old  laws  of  the  kingdom,  to  restore 
the  privileges  of  King  Edward,  with  the  amendments 
of  his  father;  not  to  sell  benefices,  or  keep  them 
vacant.  He  also  imprisoned  Flambard,  and  restored 
the  forfeited  property  of  the  see  of  Canterbury;  he  re- 
called the  archbishop,  and  Anselm  landed  in  England 
on  23  September,  iioo. 

But  now  a  new  trouble  arose,  and  the  contest  about 
lay  investiture,  which  had  so  long  agitated  the  Roman 
Church,  was  to  be  fought  out  in  England  °.  Henry 
required  Anselm  to  be  re-invested  in  his  archbishopric, 
and  to  do  homage  to  him.  The  right  of  investiture 
had  hitherto  been  part  of  the  royal  prerogative  in 
England.  Anselm  had  already  twice  consented  to 
it,  once  when  he  was  appointed  Abbot  of  Bee,  and 
again  as  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  ;  since  then  Rome 
had  declared  against  the  practice ;  and  such  an  exor- 
bitant demand  as  that  of  re-investiture  struck  at  the 
very  root  of  episcopacy.  It  must  be  mentioned  that 
investiture  was  a  ceremony  performed,  in  the  case 
of  an  abbot,  by  conferring  on  him  a  pastoral  -  staff ; 
in  that  of  a  bishop,  the  pastoral-staff  and  ring  ;  the 
pastoral^stafif  signifying  the  bishop's  pastoral  authority 
over  his  flock,  the  ring  his  marriage  to  the  Church ; 
in  fact,  it  conferred  the  spiritualities,  as  homage  did  the 
temporalities  of  the  see.  Abroad,  by  means  of  inves- 
titure, the  emperor  had  so  overawed  the  elections,  as 
virtually  to  become  the  nominator  to  all  the  higher 
preferments  of  the  Church  ;  and  there  was  danger  of 
the  same  being  done  in  England.    Anselm  refused  to 

The  contest  about  investitures  lasted  fifty-six  years,  occasioned  sixty 
battles,  and  the  loss  of  two  millions  of  lives.  It  was  settled  by  a  com- 
promise, A.D.  1 1 22,  between  the  Emperor  Henry  V.  and  Pope  Calixtus  II. 
(Hook,  ii.  241.) 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


be  re-invested  by  the  king.  It  does  not  seem  that  per- 
sonally he  thought  the  matter  of  much  importance ; 
and  his  plea  that  it  was  forbidden  by  a  canon  law  of 
Rome,  justly  laid  him  open  to  the  censure  of  the 
bishops  and  barons,  who  could  not  understand  how 
a  canon  of  Rome  was  obligatory  in  England,  or  could 
override  the  common  law  of  the  land.  But  it  must  be 
borne  in  mind  that  he  was  an  Italian,  born  and  edu- 
cated in  a  Church  which  was  wholly  dependent  on 
Rome ;  to  whom,  therefore,  the  word  of  the  Pope  was 
equivalent  to  a  command  ^ 

It  was  the  Pope  who  was  in  the  wrong  throughout ; 
it  was  his  duty  to  have  spoken  out  honestly  and  un- 
mistakeably,  either  to  enforce  the  decree,  or  to  absolve 
Anselm  from  his  obedience.  This,  as  we  shall  see, 
was  the  very  thing  he  did  not,  because  he  had  not  the 
courage,  to  do.  He  halted  between  two  things ;  he 
did  not  like  to  give  over  investitures,  and  he  did  not 
like  to  offend  Henry  :  and  thus  he  was  the  great  stum- 
bling-block in  the  way  of  the  conscientious  but  per- 
plexed archbishop,  on  whom  the  whole  blame,  and 
that  in  no  scanty  measure,  has  been  thrown.  It  may 
be  said,  he  should  have  resigned  the  primacy  ;  but 
this  was  what  he  wished  to  do  :  he  professed  his  wil- 
lingness to  leave  the  kingdom,  to  resign  his  arch- 
bishopric, to  die.  Why  did  not  Henry  take  him  at 
his  word  ?  The  answer  is  plain.  Robert,  the  rightful 
heir  to  the  throne,  had  just  returned  from  the  Holy 
Land  :  popular  before,  he  was  far  more  so  now,  from 

^  And  yet,  when  the  Pope,  in  iioo,  sought  to  invade  the  rights  of  the 
see  of  Canterbury  by  sending  his  legate,  Guido,  Archbishop  of  Vienne, 
into  the  country  (a  thing  which  Eadmer  calls,  "  inauditum  in  Britannia), 
Anselm  joined  with  the  other  parties  in  the  kingdom  in  opposing  him, 
and  Guido  was  obliged  to  return  unacknowledged. 


ANSELM,  AND  WILLIAM  II.   AND  HENRY  I.  151 


the  part  he  had  taken  in  delivering  the  Holy  Sepulchre 
from  the  infidel.  Henry  could  not  afford  to  quarrel 
with  the  Church  by  dispensing  with  the  services  o£ 
Anselm  ;  he  himself  proposed  a  via  media,  that  the 
matter  should  be  referred  to  Rome  ;  Anselm  saw  that 
the  proposition  was  only  made  to  cause  delay,  but  he 
unwillingly  consented. 

That  Anselm  was  actuated  by  no  unfriendly  feelings 
to  the  king,  or  by  an  overstrained  formality,  is  shewn 
in  his  conduct  with  respect  to  the  king's  marriage  with 
Matilda.  To  a  usurper  like  Henry,  the  marriage  was 
of  the  greatest  consequence.  Matilda  was  the  daughter 
of  Malcolm,  King  of  Scotland,  and  Margaret,  sister  of 
Edgar  Atheling,  and  thus  the  direct  representative  of 
the  Saxon  royal  family ;  and  therefore  the  marriage 
was  very  popular  with  his  Anglo-Saxon  subjects.  But 
then  there  was  a  canonical  impediment  in  the  way, 
which  appeared  insurmountable.  It  was  generally  sup- 
posed that  Matilda  had  been  a  nun.  She  had,  indeed, 
after  the  death  of  her  father  and  mother,  during  those 
troublous  times  when  religious  houses  were  the  only 
security  for  young  women  of  the  highest  families,  been 
educated  in  the  nunnery  of  Romsey,  under  her  aunt 
Christina,  the  abbess,  by  whom  she  had  been  forced 
against  her  will  to  take  the  veil.  Anselm  believed  her 
story,  and  with  an  unusual  large -heartedness,  deter- 
mined to  overcome  an  impediment,  which  was  the 
result  of  an  accident,  and  therefore,  to  his  mind,  not 
binding  on  the  conscience.  He  summoned  a  synod  at 
Lambeth,  declared  her  free  from  the  monastic  obli- 
gation, and  on  Martinmas,  a.d.  iioo,  solemnized  her 
marriage  with  the  king  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

William  of  Warelwast  (afterwards  Bishop  of  Exeter), 
whom  Henry  had  sent  to  Pope  Paschal  H,,  returned 


152  THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 

from  Rome,  bringing  a  friendly  letter  to  the  king, 
but  no  relaxation  in  the  matter  of  investiture  to 
Anselm. 

Henry  ignored  the  Pope's  decision,  and  Anselm  de- 
termined to  leave  England.  Henry  was  still  reluctant 
that  Anselm  should  do  this,  and  proposed  to  send 
a  new  embassy  to  Rome.  On  the  part  of  the  king, 
Gerhard,  Archbishop  of  York,  Herbert,  Bishop  of 
Norwich,  and  Robert,  Bishop  of  Lichfield  ;  on  the 
part  of  Anselm,  two  monks,  Baldwin  of  Tournay,  and 
Alexander  of  Canterbury,  were  selected.  The  king 
sent  a  letter  to  the  Pope,  threatening  that  unless  the 
matter  was  decided  in  his  favour,  he  would  withdraw 
the  Peter-pence,  and  break  off  all  communion  with  the 
Church  of  Rome.  And  now  we  get  the  insight  into 
Anselm's  difficulties.  The  Pope  felt  that  Anselm  was 
in  the  right ;  and  yet  he  liked  England's  money,  and 
wished  to  avoid  a  quarrel  with  Henry.  So  (if  we  are 
to  believe  the  three  bishops)  he  acted  with  unintelli- 
gible duplicity,  and  sent  back  two  contradictory  an- 
swers. To  Anselm  a  written  one,  exhorting  him  to 
persist  in  his  refusal  :  to  Henry  a  verbal  reply,  which 
probably  he  never  expected  to  be  published,  saying 
that  as  he  was  such  an  excellent  prince,  he  consented 
to  his  granting  investitures,  but  that  he  would  not 
commit  his  decision  to  paper,  lest  other  princes  should 
hear  of  it,  and  demand  a  similar  privilege. 

"  Vox  audita  perit ;  litera  scripta  manet."  A  violent 
dispute  ensued.  Which  of  the  two  judgments  should 
be  received  ?  The  monks  said,  there  could  be  no 
doubt  about  theirs,  because  it  was  in  black  and  white  ; 
the  bishops  said,  there  could  be  no  doubt  about  theirs, 
because  they  were  bishops,  and  a  bishop's  word  was 
better  than  the  parchment  of  two  "  monklings." 


ANSELM,   AND  WILLIAM  II.  AND  HENRY  I.       1 53 

All  was  now  confusion ;  the  king  appointed  to  va- 
cant benefices,  and  Anselm  refused  to  consecrate  his 
nominees  ;  and  although  the  Archbishop  of  York  was 
willing  to  supply  his  place,  two  bishops-elect,  Reinhelm 
to  Hereford,  and  William  to  Winchester,  refused  to  be 
consecrated  by  him  under  such  terms. 

Henry  now  proposed  that  Anselm  should  himself  go 
to  Rome.  Accordingly,  on  the  27th  April,  1103,  he, 
now  old  and  infirm,  once  more  started  for  Rome,  where 
he  found  that  Warelwast  had  preceded  him,  and  was 
backing  up  the  king's  cause  with  a  valuable  present  of 
Peter-pence.  Warelwast  declared  that  the  king  would 
rather  resign  his  crown  than  the  right  of  investiture ; 
Paschal,  with  even  greater  warmth,  that  "  he  would 
not,  before  God,  suffer  him  to  have  it."  Yet  he  gave 
every  point  in  the  king's  favour.  What  could  Anselm 
do  with  such  a  weak,  not  to  say  prevaricating.  Pope 
The  Pope  had  denied,  in  a  letter  to  Anselm,  the  mes- 
sage delivered  to  Henry  by  the  three  bishops.  Anselm 
could  not  trust  the  Pope  :  he  determined  to  leave 
Rome,  and  to  take  the  matter  into  his  own  hands, 
and,  if  necessary,  excommunicate  Henry,  from  which 
he  was  only  averted  by  Henry's  sister,  the  Countess 
of  Blois,  who,  seeing  the  danger  that  threatened  the 
kingdom,  effected  an  interview  between  the  king  and 
the  archbishop  at  the  castle  of  L'Aigle  in  Normandy. 

Henry  was  in  the  midst  of  difficulties.  He  was 
engaged  in  war  with  his  brother  Robert,  and  the  ex- 
penses necessary  for  carrying  it  on  made  him  un- 
popular with  the  people ;  whilst  his  exactions  and 
simoniacal  acts  rendered  him  unpopular  with  the  clergy. 
Gerhard,  the  Archbishop  of  York,  and  other  bishops, 
now  saw  the  error  of  their  former  course,  and  deter- 
mined to  make  common  cause  with  Anselm.  Henry 


154 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


was  determined  therefore  to  avert,  if  possible,  the 
threatened  excommunication.  And  now  a  fortunate 
way  of  escape  presented  itself :  William  of  Warelwast 
returned  from  Rome  with  a  proposal  for  a  compro- 
mise ;  the  right  of  homage  for  the  temporalities  was 
to  be  conceded  to  the  king,  and  of  investiture,  which 
symbolized  the  spiritual  authority,  to  the  Church. 
These  conditions  were  ratified  at  a  solemn  confer- 
ence at  Bee,  in  August,  1106;  the  king  promised  to 
restore  to  Anselm  the  revenues  of  his  see,  to  abstain 
from  seizing  the  property  of  the  Church,  and  to  remit 
all  fines  to  the  clergy,  and  to  allow  a  cou^S  d'elire 
to  the  chapters. 

Thus  Anselm's  integrity  and  consistency  gained 
a  great  victory  to  the  Church  over  oppression  and 
wrong.  He  had  to  contend  with  two  thoroughly  un- 
scrupulous kings,  who  cared  nothing  for  the  Church, 
and  acted  only  for  their  own  interests.  Whatever  else 
people  may  think  of  him,  all  must  allow  that  he  fought 
the  battle  fairly,  openly,  and  conscientiously ;  he  esta- 
blished what  is  true  and  necessary  at  all  times,  that 
spiritual  power,  and  the  conferring  spiritual  gifts,  does 
not  belong  to  kings ;  the  battle  had  been  fought  and 
won  for  the  Church,  and  for  the  rest  of  his  life  Anselm 
enjoyed  the  confidence  and  respect  of  Henry. 

But  unfortunately  he  bought  the  victory  at  a  great 
price,  at  a  price  which  went  on  increasing  with  usu- 
rious interest,  the  subjection  of  the  English  to  the 
Roman  Church ;  he  had  delivered  the  Church  from 
a  temporal,  only  to  deliver  it  for  four  hundred  years 
into  the  hands  of  a  spiritual,  despot. 

Anselm,  like  Lanfranc,  had  been  a  monk,  and  to 
this  must  be  ascribed  his  advocacy  of  clerical  celibacy. 
An  intolerable  evil  had  arisen  out  of  the  marriage 


ANSELM,  AND  WILLIAM  II.  AND  HENRY  L        1 55 

of  the  clergy,  that  the  son  inherited  his  father's  bene- 
fice ;  but  the  cure  of  this  led  to  another  evil,  the  en- 
forcement of  clerical  celibacy.  At  a  synod  of  West- 
minster, A.D.  1102,  which  was  attended  by  bishops, 
abbots,  and  lay-peers,  a  stringent  canon  was  enacted 
against  the  marriage  of  the  clergy ;  none  could  be  or- 
dained even  a  sub-deacon,  without  a  profession  of 
celibacy ;  whilst  no  priest,  if  already  married,  was  al- 
lowed to  perform  Mass.  This  Henry  turned  to  his  own 
advantage,  by  allowing  the  clergy  to  retain  their  wives 
on  the  payment  of  a  tax.  Still  stricter  enactments 
were  passed  in  another  synod  in  London,  1108 ;  and 
severe  penalties  were  denounced  against  those  of  the 
clergy  who  had  married  wives  since  the  synod  of 
1 102. 

Anselm  was  distinguished  as  a  philosopher,  no  less 
than  a  Churchman.  His  writings  bear  upon  the 
most  profound  theological  and  metaphysical  myste- 
ries ;  his  works,  "  Cur  Deus  Homo,"  and  "  De  Con- 
cordia Praescientise  et  Praedestinationis,"  forming  an 
epoch  in  Christian  philosophy.  Although  Alexander 
of  Hales  was  the  first  who  completely  systematized  in 
the  scholastic  manner  the  doctrines  of  the  Church, 
yet  Anselm  may  be  considered,  if  not  the  founder,  at 
any  rate  the  forerunner,  of  that  scholasticism  which, 
from  the  end  of  the  eleventh  to  the  beginning  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  exerted  such  a  powerful  influence 
over  the  European  mind.  Anselm  died  a.d.  1109,  in 
the  seventy-sixth  year  of  his  age,  in  the  sixteenth  year 
of  his  pontificate. 

After  his  death,  the  king  kept  the  see  of  Canterbury 
vacant  for  five  years  :  after  which  he  appointed  Ralph 
of  Escures,  who  had  formerly  been  Abbot  of  Seez  in. 
Normandy,  and  was  at  the  time  Bishop  of  Rochester  j 


156  THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 

a  learned  and  amiable  man,  but  a  confirmed  invalid  ; 
so  much  was  this  the  case,  that  though  the  Pope 
always  required  the  personal  attendance  of  the  arch- 
bishop at  Rome  to  obtain  the  pall,  in  this  case  he 
allowed  it  to  be  conveyed  to  England  by  Anselm, 
a  nephew  of  the  late  archbishop.  The  chief  event 
in  Ralph's  primacy  was  one  of  those  unseemly  quarrels 
so  frequently  occurring  between  the  two  archbishops. 
Lanfranc  had  had  a  difficulty  with  Thomas  of  York  ; 
Anselm  with  Gerhard  and  Thomas  of  York,  as  to  the 
oath  of  obedience  demanded  by  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury ;  and  now  again,  Thurstan,  the  hero  of 
the  battle  of  the  "  Standard,"  who  succeeded  Thomas, 
refused  to  take  the  oath  of  obedience  to  Archbishop 
Ralph.  Thurstan,  chaplain  to  King  Henry,  and  a  man 
much  renowned  for  his  piety  and  great  liberality, 
having  been  appointed  Archbishop  of  York,  sought 
consecration  from  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  who 
refused  to  confer  it,  without  his  taking  the  oath  of 
canonical  obedience.  Thurstan,  not  consulting  his 
own  inclinations,  but,  as  he  thought,  the  dignity  of 
his  see,  refused  to  take  the  oath,  and  wouM  have 
resigned  the  archbishopric ;  but  the  chapter  of  York 
declining  to  have  any  archbishop  but  him,  he  went 
abroad,  and  was  consecrated  by  Pope  Calixtus  II., 
one  of  the  two  rival  Popes  then  governing  the  Roman 
see,  who  was  at  the  time  holding  a  synod  at  Rheims, 
which  several  English  bishops  attended.  As  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  claimed  the  obedience  of  the 
English  bishops,  without  any  reservation  of  obedience 
to  Rome,  the  Pope  was  glad  of  the  opportunity  of 
advancing  a  rival  archbishop ;  so  he  not  only  con- 
secrated Thurstan,  but  put  him  on  an  equality  with 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.    For  receiving  con- 


ANSELM,   AND  WILLIAM   II.   AND  HENRY  I.        1 57 


secration  from  the  Pope,  Henry  for  more  than  a  year 
banished  Thurstan  from,  although  afterwards  he  al- 
lowed him  to  take  possession  of,  his  see. 

Ralph  was  succeeded  by  a  French  priest,  William 
of  Corboil, — "  old  Turmoil,"  they  called  him  ^ — a  man 
whose  birth  and  parentage  are  unknown,  except  that 
he  was  born  near  Paris ;  formerly  Prior  of  St.  Osyth's 
in  Essex,  but  a  man  of  by  no  means  unblemished  cha- 
racter, and  who  had  been  one  of  the  chaplains  of  the 
notorious  Ralph  Flambard.  Being  a  Frenchman,  he 
thought  that  the  same  allegiance  was  due  to  the  Pope 
from  England  as  from  France ;  he  acknowledged  the 
Pope's  right  and  supremacy  in  England,  and  himself 
to  be  merely  the  Pope's  vicar  :  thus  laying,  more  than 
any  of  his  predecessors  had  done,  the  foundation  of 
the  papal  dominion  in  England. 

But  he  soon  found  out  his  mistake.  In  his  primacy, 
A.D.  1 125,  the  Pope  appointed  John  of  Crema,  Cardinal 
of  St.  Chrysogonus,  as  "  legatus  a  latere"  in  England, 
who  consequently  took  precedence  of  all  the  English 
bishops,  and  actually,  in  a  synod  held  in  London,  occu- 
pied a  seat  higher  than  the  archbishop  himself.  The 
new  legate,  whose  exactions  and  insolent  bearing 
created  universal  disgust,  had  laid  the  king  under 
an  obligation,  through  some  political  services  ren- 
dered to  him  ;  and  as  he  was  desirous  of  the  honour- 
able and  lucrative  post  of  legate,  Henry,  who  was 
at  the  time  a  conscience-stricken  and  heart-broken 
old  man,  and  was  desirous  of  conciliating  the  Pope 
in  favour  of  his  daughter,  the  Empress  Maud,  found 
it  difficult  to  refuse  him.  The  primate  represented 
at  Rome  the  injustice  to  himself  of  such  a  precedence 
given  to  an  extraordinary  {a  latere)  legate ;  so  he  was 

*  Churton,  p.  311. 


158  THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH, 

appointed  by  the  Pope  ordinary  [natus)  legate  in 
England.  He  accepted  the  office,  so  derogatory  to 
the  primate  of  all  England  ;  but  his  obsequiousness 
did  not  long  profit  him.  Another  Pope,  Innocent  II., 
A.D.  1 1 3 1 ,  took  away  from  him  the  legate's  office  en- 
tirely, and  conferred  it  on  one  of  his  suffragans,  Henry 
of  Blois,  brother  of  King  Stephen,  and  Bishop  of 
Winchester  ^  And,  although  the  succeeding  arch- 
bishop, Theobald,  who  was  much  embarrassed  by  his 
suffragan  claiming  authority  over  him,  and  sitting  in 
synods  above  him,  recovered  it  to  the  primacy  of 
England  by  the  payment  of  large  sums  of  money, 
yet  from  this  time  a  papal  legate  became  established 
in  England ;  who  superseded  the  archbishop,  held 
councils,  passed  laws  for  the  English  Church,  and 
extorted  enormous  sums  for  his  foreigrn  master.  Thus 
by  one  archbishop,  and  him  a  foreigner,  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  English  Church  was  lost,  and  not 
recovered  till  the  Reformation  ^. 

Stephen,  Count  of  Boulogne,  son  of  Henry's  sister, 
Adela,  although  he  had  sworn  allegiance  to  Maud,  the 
only  child  of  Henry,  usurped  the  throne,  and  as  might 
be  expected  from  an  usurper,  promised  obedience  to 
the  Pope,  who  was  only  too  willing  under  such  terms 
to  sanction  the  usurpation,  William  of  Corboil,  although 
he  also  had  sworn  to  recognise  the  Empress  Maud, 
performing  the  office  of  consecration.  His  reign  pre- 
sented nothing  but  misfortune  to  the  Church.  Churches 
were  burnt,  or  converted  into  fortresses,  and  monaste- 
ries plundered.  "  Never  yet,"  says  the  Saxon  Chro- 
nicle, "  had  more  wretchedness  been  in  the  land,  nor 
did  heathen  men  ever  do  worse  than  they  did ;  for 


'  The  founder  of  St.  Cross  Hospital. 


^  Churton,  p.  310. 


ANSELM,  AND  WILLIAM  II.   AND  HENRY  I.        1 59 


everywhere,  at  times,  they  forbore  neither  church  nor 
churchyard,  but  took  all  the  property  that  was  therein, 
and  then  burned  the  church  and  all  together.  Nor 
forbore  they  a  bishop's  land,  nor  an  abbot's,  nor 
a  priest's,  but  robbed  monks  and  clerks,  and  every 
man  another,  who  anywhere  could.  The  bishops  and 
clergy  constantly  cursed  them,  but  nothing  came 
of  it  ;  for  they  were  all  accursed,  and  foresworn, 
and  lost." 

Before  long  the  flames  of  civil  war  were  kindled  in 
the  land.  In  the  third  year  of  Stephen's  reign,  David, 
King  of  Scotland,  and  uncle  of  Maud,  collected  his 
forces,  under  pretence  of  avenging  his  niece ;  and, 
causing  cruel  havoc  and  devastation  on  all  sides,  en- 
tered Yorkshire.  The  name  of  the  aged  Thurstan  ^, 
Archbishop  of  York,  lives  in  history  in  connection 
with  the  battle  of  the  "  Standard."  He  exhorted  the 
northern  barons,  who,  in  hopes  of  partaking  of  the 
spoils,  had  before  joined  the  invading  army,  to  protect 
the  country  against  such  wanton  cruelty  and  destruc- 
tion. No  royal  banner  was  carried  to  the  field  :  to 
impress  the  people  that  they  were  fighting  for  their 
religion  and  their  homes,  the  archbishop  raised  the 
banners  of  St.  Cuthbert,  of  St.  John  of  Beverley,  and 
of  St.  Wilfrid  of  Ripon ;  the  standards  were  carried 
to  Northallerton,  some  thirty  miles  distant,  where  the 
barons  were  awaiting  the  enemy's  attack.  On  a  wag- 
gon was  raised  a  ship-mast,  on  the  top  of  which  was 
placed  a  small  silver  Pyx,  containing  the  consecrated 
Host,  such  as  was  used  in  the  processions  of  the 
Church,  whilst  from  it  streamed  the  banners  of  the 
saints.    This  standard  occupied  the  centre  of  the  line 

Thurstan  was  the  founder  of  Fountains  Abbey. 


i6o 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


of  battle ;  round  it  being  gathered  the  barons,  all 
resolved  to  conquer  or  to  die.  The  archbishop,  too 
infirm  to  attend  in  person,  sent  in  his  place  the  Bishop 
of  Durham,  who,  standing  on  the  waggon,  encouraged 
the  soldiers  to  the  battle.  The  Scots  were  com- 
pletely routed ;  and  thus,  through  the  devout  energy 
of  Thurstan,  a  stop  was  put  to  the  most  successful 
attempt  ever  made  by  the  Scots  on  the  borders  of 
Enorland. 

o 

The  papal  power  under  Stephen,  as  was  always  the 
case  under  weak  or  vicious  kings,  made  rapid  strides 
in  the  country.  Albericus,  Bishop  of  Ostia,  and  one 
of  the  Pope's  legates,  passing  through  the  country, 
took  upon  himself  to  hold  visitations  in  the  monas- 
teries and  colleges  of  England ;  and,  a  thing  which 
until  the  reign  of  Stephen  would  have  rendered  him 
guilty  of  treason,  convened  a  synod  at  Westminster  on 
the  13th  December,  1138. 

And  yet  this  was  surpassed  by  the  conduct  of 
Stephen's  own  brother,  Henry  of  Blois,  the  Pope's 
legate  in  this  country.  The  military  propensities  of 
the  clergy,  who  were  imitating  the  examples  of  the 
barons  in  building  strongly-fortified  castles  \  excited 
the  anger  of  Stephen,  who  imprisoned  three  of  the 
most  military  bishops,  the  Bishops  of  Salisbury,  Ely, 
and  Lincoln.  His  brother  Henry,  who  had  before 
taken  the  king's  side,  being  disappointed  at  Theobald 
being  appointed  over  him  as  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury, determined  to  be  avenged  on  his  brother.  He 
not  only  maintained  that  these  bishops  ought  to  be 
tried  by  an  ecclesiastical  court,  but  he  even  claimed 

'  The  barons  built  more  than  iioo  castles,  from  which  they  oppressed 
and  plundered  the  people  at  their  pleasure. 


ANSELM,  AND  WILLIAM  II.  AND  HENRY  I.  l6l 

the  power  as  papal  legate  of  deciding  between  the 
rights  of  Stephen  and  the  Empress  Maud.  Accord- 
ingly, he  convened  a  synod  on  the  26th  August,  1 1 39, 
before  which  he  summoned  the  king  to  answer  for 
his  conduct,  and  before  this  synod  the  king  not  only 
condescended  to  appear  by  counsel,  but  even  to  do 
penance  in  obedience  to  it. 


M 


CHAPTER  III. 


THOMAS  A  BECKET  AND  HENRY  U. 

TN  the  next  great  struggle  between  the  Church  and 
^  Crown,  a  Becket  and  Henry  H.  were  the  actors. 
The  contention  between  them  was  this  :  Becket  in- 
sisted that  all  clerical  offenders  should  be  judged  by 
the  spiritual  court,  and  punished  according  to  the 
canon  law.  Henry,  that  having  been  convicted  in 
the  civil  courts,  they  should  first  be  degraded  by  the 
Church,  and  then  handed  over  to  the  civil  court  for 
punishment. 

Thomas  a  Becket  was  born  in  Cheapside,  London, 
A.D.  1118.  A  very  romantic  story,  but  scarcely  on 
sufficient  authority,  is  related  of  his  parentage.  His 
father,  Gilbert  Becket,  a  London  portreve,  joined  in 
one  of  the  Crusades ;  and  being  taken  prisoner,  be- 
came the  slave  of  a  rich  Saracen.  His  master's 
daughter,  Roesa,  fell  in  love  with  him,  and  effected 
his  escape,  with  the  understanding  that  she  should 
accompany  him ;  but  Gilbert  either  forgot,  or  in  the 
hurry  of  his  flight  had  not  time,  to  take  his  deliverer 
with  him.  She,  however,  was  not  so  easily  to  be 
shaken  off ;  and  though  ignorant  of  the  English  lan- 
guage, knowing  only  that  he  lived  in  London,  she 
pursued,  discovered,  and  was  married  to  her  lover. 
The  fruit  of  this  marriage  was  Thomas. 

As  he  shewed  promise  of  great  ability,  in  order 
that  he  might  receive  a  good  education,  he  was,  when 
only  about  ten  years  of  age,  put  under  the  care  of 
the  canons  of  Merton,  in  Surrey.  In  his  boyhood  he 
nearly  lost  his  life  :  whilst  crossing  a  narrow  bridge 


THOMAS  A  BECKET  AND  HENRY  II. 


in  a  hawking  expedition,  his  pony  took  a  false  step, 
and  fell  into  a  mill-stream.  Becket  could  easily  have 
swum  to  land  ;  but  in  his  anxiety  for  the  hawk,  he 
was  drawn  down  by  the  current  under  the  mill, 
another  turn  of  which  would  have  torn  him  to  pieces, 
when  the  miller  stopped  the  wheel,  and  pulled  him 
out  half-dead. 

From  Merton  he  passed  to  the  schools  of  London, 
then  in  high  repute.  Afterwards  he  studied  Theology 
at  the  famous  University  of  Paris ;  whilst,  later  on,  he 
studied  the  civil  and  canon  law  at  Bologna  and  Aux- 
erre.  From  this  varied  education  he  gained  some- 
thing more  than  mere  scholarship,  (indeed,  in  book 
learning,  he  does  not  appear  to  have  attained  any 
great  proficiency)  ;  he  became  universally  popular, 
and  by  some  of  his  numerous  friends  he  was  intro- 
duced to  Archbishop  Theobald,  who  admitted  him  to 
deacon's  orders  ;  and  as  a  deacon  he  was  admitted 
to  the  rectories  of  St.  Mary-le-Strand,  London,  and 
Offord  in  Kent,  a  prebend  of  St.  Paul's,  the  provost- 
ship  of  Beverley,  and  later  the  archdeaconry  of  Can- 
terbury, the  largest  piece  of  preferment  and  the 
highest  dignity  in  the  Church,  next  to  a  bishopric. 
On  the  accession  of  Henry  IL  he  was  removed  to  his 
court,  and  appointed  by  him  high  chancellor  of  the 
kingdom,  a.d.  1155;  whilst  he  not  only  retained  his 
archdeaconry  and  other  Church  preferments,  but  added 
to  them  the  deanery  of  Hastings,  and  the  wardenship 
of  the  castles  of  Eye  and  Berkhamstead,  the  former 
with  a  service  of  one -hundred -and -fifty  knights  at- 
tached to  it  ;  he  was  also  tutor  to  the  young  prince. 

At  this  period  of  his  life,  Becket  shewed  himself 
the  faithful  friend  and  confidential  minister  of  the 

•  Hook,  ii.  367. 
M  2 


164 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


king.  As  we  have  seen,  he  was  only  in  minor  orders ; 
he  therefore  thought  it  no  harm  to  dress  and  Hve  Hke 
a  layman.  He  was  a  hunter,  hawker,  soldier,  states- 
man :  opposed  rather  than  otherwise  to  clerical  pre- 
tensions ;  yet,  unlike  the  king,  he  was  a  strict  up- 
holder of  morality,  a  man  of  unbounded  charity,  and 
one  whom  no  one  ever  accused  of  duplicity. 

This  was  the  man  whom  Henry  raised,  a.d.  i  162,  to 
the  archbishopric  of  Canterbury.  Becket,  with  his 
many  faults,  had  many  virtues ;  and  one  was  that  he 
was  a  thoroughly  conscientious  man.  So  when  Henry 
offered  him  the  archbishopric,  Becket  told  him  plainly 
that  if  he  accepted  it,  their  friendship  would  certainly 
end  ;  for  the  king  would  assume  authority  over  the 
Church,  to  which  he,  as  archbishop,  would  never  con- 
sent. That  surely  was  plain  speaking  enough.  Becket 
had  lived  in  the  court  of  good  Bishop  Theobald ;  that 
was  a  strict  school  to  teach  the  duties  of  an  arch- 
bishop :  and  Becket  was  not  the  man  to  accept  an 
office,  the  duties  of  which  he  did  not  intend  to  per- 
form. Henry,  like  a  good  many  reformers,  especially 
Church  reformers,  would  recognise  no  will  at  all  but 
his  own.  He  had  made  up  his  mind  that  the  Church 
should  succumb  to  him ;  he  wanted  some  one,  not  to 
say  without,  but  with  a  pliable,  conscience,  who  would 
let  him  do  with  the  Church  exactly  what  he  wanted. 
It  can  hardly  be  supposed  that  a  violent  man  of 
Henry's  character,  a  man  "  who  whispered,  and  scrib- 
bled, and  looked  at  picture-books  during  Mass,  who 
never  confessed,  and  cursed  God  in  wild  frenzies  of 
blasphemies  was  one  adapted  to  undertake  the 
business  of  Church  reform,  or  into  whose  schemes  an 
archbishop  would  readily  fall.  But  Henry,  having 
Green,  loi  (small  edit). 


i 


THOMAS  A  BECKET  AND  HENRY  II.  165 

once  offered  the  archbishopric  to  Becket,  would  listen 
to  no  refusal ;  and  the  Pope's  legate,  Henry  of  Pisa, 
also  used  his  influence  to  induce  him  to  accept.  Becket 
having  warned  the  king,  thought  he  had  done  his 
duty.  No  doubt  the  voice  of  ambition  made  itself 
heard ;  he  accepted  the  offer,  was  ordained  priest  one 
day,  archbishop  the  next,  and  enthroned  with  great 
ceremony  at  Canterbury. 

From  the  time  of  his  consecration  as  archbishop, 
Becket  was  an  altered  man.  He  changed  his  luxu- 
riousness  for  the  most  rigid  asceticism,  and  his  secular 
dress  for  the  bishop's  mitre  and  cope ;  he  assumed 
the  Benedictine  habit,  and  wore  sackcloth,  which  he 
changed  so  seldom  that  it  became  stocked  with  vermin, 
next  to  his  body ;  he  took  for  his  food  either  plain 
bread,  or  diet  of  the  coarsest  kind  ;  and  mixed  his 
drink,  which  was  only  water,  with  bitter  herbs ;  he 
lacerated  his  back  with  severe  penances,  and  daily 
washed  the  feet  of  thirteen  beggars.  His  heart  and 
mind  underwent  a  corresponding  change ;  he  spent 
his  time  in  prayer,  he  doubled  the  charities  of  his 
predecessor,  and  appeared  as  the  champion  of  the 
Church  against  oppressors ;  and  as  he  was  not  able 
to  perform  its  duties  properly,  he  resigned  the  chan- 
cellorship. 

The  king  felt  that  a  storm  was  brewing ;  and  both 
combatants  being  of  a  fiery  temper,  it  burst  at  once. 
Henry  asked  Becket  why  he  had  not,  with  the  chan- 
cellorship, resigned  also  the  valuable  archdeaconry, 
and  required  him  to  do  so  at  once.  Becket,  on  his 
part,  refused  to  appoint  a  friend  of  the  king's  to  the 
archdeaconry  of  Canterbury ;  he  likewise  excommu- 
nicated William  of  Eynesford,  one  of  the  king's 
tenants-in-chief.    Henceforward  there  was  open,  and 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


with  few  interludes,  incessant  skirmishes  between 
them,  which  were  only  ended  with  Becket's  death. 

The  separation  made  by  William  I.,  of  the  civil  and 
ecclesiastical  courts,  was  the  cause  of  all  the  miseries 
of  Becket's  primacy.  The  exemption  granted  by  him 
to  the  clergy,  from  being  tried  and  punished  by  the 
secular  courts  for  crimes  of  the  worst  character,  had 
by  the  time  of  Henry  II.  become  intolerable.  It  must 
be  remembered  that  under  the  name  of  clergy  were  in- 
cluded all  who  received  the  tonsure  ;  all  acolytes,  clerks, 
sextons,  grave-diggers,  all  in  a  word  who  performed  any 
offices  connected  with  the  church  or  monasteries  :  nor 
does  even  this  exhaust  the  catalogue,  which  comprised 
widows  and  orphans,  the  pilgrim,  the  crusader,  the 
poor,  and  the  stranger".  The  punishments  inflicted 
by  the  Normans  in  the  civil  courts  were  of  the  most 
cruel  kind ;  not  only  loss  of  life,  but  maiming,  brand- 
ing, and  putting  out  the  eyes,  were  of  common  occur- 
rence. The  severity  of  these  punishments  was  so  in 
contrast  with  the  stripes  or  the  penance  inflicted  by  the 
canon  law,  that  for  no  other  reason  than  to  escape 
them,  many  embraced  the  line  of  life  which  entitled 
them  to  be  numbered  amongst  spiritual  persons. 

When  Henry  II.  came  to  the  throne,  he  found  that 
the  greatest  abuses  had  arisen  from  the  immunities  of 
these  so-called  clergy.  The  vices  of  the  times  did 
not  extend  to  the  higher  clergy,  whose  lives  were  in 
marked  contrast  with  those  of  the  barons  :  but  amongst 
the  lower  clergy  sins  of  the  grossest  character,  rob- 
beries, murders,  adulteries,  were  of  common  occur- 
rence,— since  the  accession  of  Henry  one  hundred 
murders  are  said  to  have  been  perpetrated  by  clerks  ; 
and  since  the  ecclesiastical  courts  could  not  inflict  the 

'  Hallam,  Mid.  Ages,  vol.  ii.  309. 


THOMAS  A  BECKET  AND  HENRY  11.  1 6/ 


same  severe  penalties  as  the  civil  courts,  these  per- 
sons, simply  because  they  were  by  an  absurd  custom 
reckoned  amongst  the  clergy,  escaped  with  compara- 
tive impunity,  and  whilst  others  were  hung,  they  were 
only  degraded  or  sent  into  a  monastery. 

It  is  evident,  therefore,  on  the  one  hand,  that  Henry 
was  right  in  putting  down  such  an  acknowledged  evil ; 
some  reformation  was  plainly  needed,  and  to  suppose 
that  Becket  would  desire  for  the  clergy  an  immunity 
for  sinning  would  be  absurd.  But  then,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  reformation  must  be  effected  in  such  a  way 
as  not  to  make  the  Church  the  slave  of  the  State  ;  and 
the  civil  despotism  which  had  existed  under  Rufus 
or  Henry  I.,  was  not  such  as  any  conscientious  Church- 
man could  tolerate  to  see  repeated. 

The  king  summoned,  in  October,  1163,  a  meeting 
of  bishops  and  abbots  at  Westminster,  and  made  the 
proposal  that  clerks  on  conviction  should  first  be  de- 
graded, and  then  handed  over  for  punishment  to  the 
civil  authorities.  To  this  the  bishops  were  at  first 
inclined  to  agree.  But  Becket  at  once  saw  through 
it ;  not  only  would  it  inflict  a  double  punishment  on 
clerical  delinquents,  first  degradation  by  the  spiritual, 
and  then  a  further  punishment  by  the  temporal  court, 
but  it  aimed  a  deadly  blow  against  the  principle  for 
which  he  was  striving,  viz.,  the  independence,  or  at 
any  rate  the  non-subjection,  of  the  Church  to  the  State  ; 
through  him  the  bishops  were  brought  to  view  the 
matter  in  the  same  light ;  and  when  Henry  demanded 
of  them  whether  or  not  they  were  willing  to  submit  to 
the  ancient  laws  and  customs  of  the  kingdom,  they  all, 
with  the  exception  of  the  Bishop  of  Chichester,  an- 
swered that  they  were  willing,  saving  their  order  ^. 

"  This  was  the  watchword  of  Becket  throughout  the  quarrel,  "  salvd 
ecclesias  dignitate  ;"  whilst  that  of  the  king  was  "salva  dignitate  regni." 


1 68  THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 

The  king  was  so  enraged,  that  he  abruptly  left  the 
assembly,  and  had  recourse  to  a  mean  piece  of  spite, 
(a  thing  not  uncommon  with  him)  :  the  next  morning 
he  sent  and  demanded  from  Becket  the  resignation  of 
the  castles  and  other  temporal  honours  which  he  held 
from  the  Crown ;  a  demand  which,  if  he  made  it  at  all, 
he  ought  to  have  made  at  the  time  when  Becket  re- 
signed the  chancellorship. 

A  short  glimpse  of  hope  now  occurred.  Moved  by 
the  entreaties  of  Pope  Alexander,  who  was  unwilling 
to  incur  the  enmity  of  Henry,  Becket  gave  way,  and 
paid  a  visit  to  the  king  at  Woodstock,  and  promised 
to  obey  the  customs  of  the  kingdom.  But  Henry 
wished  to  humble  Becket  still  further  :  his  humiliation 
must  be  made  public,  and  with  a  view  to  this,  Henry, 
on  25th  January,  11 64,  summoned  a  council  to  Claren- 
don, near  Salisbury,  which  was  attended  by  the  two 
archbishops,  twelve  bishops,  and  more  than  forty 
barons, 

Becket  and  the  bishops  promised  to  obey  the 
customs  of  the  realm ;  but  the  question  was,  what 
were  the  customs  of  the  realm  ?  to  define  this,  six- 
teen articles  were  drawn  up,  which  are  known  as 
the  Constitutions  of  Clarendon.  Of  these  articles 
many  were  only  a  re-enactment  of  the  laws  existing 
in  the  reign  of  William  I,,  and  were  therefore  such 
as  Becket  had  promised  to  obey ;  but  some  of  the 
articles  were  wholly  new.  The  effect  of  them  was 
to  grant  an  appeal  from  the  ecclesiastical  to  the 
civil  courts  ^ ;  in  fact,  to  place  the  Church  at  the 

On  his  part  Becket  was  so  determined  on  his  proviso,  as  to  declare  that 
"  if  an  angel  from  heaven  advised  him  to  withdraw  it,  he  would  anathe- 
matize that  angel." 

'  The  eighth  Canon  is  remarkable,  as  shewing  that  if  justice  could  not 
be  obtained  in  the  archbishop's  court,  a  recourse  might  be  had  to  the  king, 


THOMAS  A  BECKET  AND  HENRY  H. 


169 


mercy  of  whatever  the  king  and  his  court  from  time 
to  time  might  think  fit  to  do,  to  bring  back  all  the 
evils  of  the  reigns  of  Rufus  and  Henry  I.,  when  the 
king  could  keep  abbeys  and  bishoprics  vacant  as 
long  as  he  pleased,  and  appropriate  the  revenues 
as  if  they  had  been  his  own  estate, 

Becket  at  first  refused  his  consent,  but  afterwards, 
through  pressure  from  the  bishops  and  nobles,  yield- 
ed, and  the  Constitutions  of  Clarendon  became  for 
a  time  the  law  of  the  land. 

Becket,  when  he  had  time  for  reflexion,  and  fully 
realized  what  he  had  done,  and  the  artifices  that 
had  been  employed  against  him,  was  a  miserable 
man  :  he  underwent  a  voluntary  penance,  and  sus- 
pended himself  from  his  office  until  he  should  re- 
ceive absolution  from  the  Pope.  At  that  time  there 
were  (what  was  not  uncommon)  two  Popes,  each 
excommunicating  the  other  and  the  other's  adher- 
ents, so  that  from  one  Pope  or  the  other  all  Europe 
was  under  excommunication ;  and  whilst  one  Pope 
ruled  at  Rome,  the  other  Pope,  Alexander,  who 
was  acknowledged  by  the  English,  was  holding  his 
court  at  Sens. 

To  him  both  Henry  and  Becket  applied  :  the  former, 
that  he  would  appoint  the  Archbishop  of  York  as 
legate  over  Becket's  head ;  the  latter,  for  advice  and 
absolution  :   the  Pope  tried  to  satisfy,  and   so  of 

but  even  then  it  was  to  be  finally  decided  in  the  archbishop's  court. 
"  In  case  of  appeals  in  ecclesiastical  causes,  the  first  step  is  to  be  made 
from  the  archdeacon  to  the  bishop  ;  and  from  the  bishop  to  the  arch- 
bishop. And  if  the  archbishop  fails  to  do  justice,  a  further  recourse  may 
be  had  to  the  king  ;  by  whose  order  the  controversy  is  to  be  finally  decided 
in  the  archbishop's  court.  Neither  shall  it  be  lawful  for  either  of  the 
parties  to  move  for  any  further  remedy  without  leave  from  the  Crown 
i.e.  appeals  to  the  Pope  were  prohibited. 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH, 


course  displeased,  both  :  he  sent  to  Becket  a  letter 
of  comfort,  and  his  absolution ;  he  also  sent  the  le- 
gatine  commission  to  the  king,  but  clogged  with  such 
conditions  as  to  render  it  nugatory'  ^ 

The  king  dared  not  impeach  Becket ;  all  he  could 
do  was  by  vexatious,  if  not  untrue,  charges,  to  force 
him  into  another  quarrel,  or  to  make  him  resign  his 
archbishopric.  John,  the  king's  "  Marshal,"  sum- 
moned Becket  before  the  king's  court  for  an  alleged 
act  of  injustice  towards  himself ;  and  when  Becket 
did  not  appear,  it  was  construed  into  a  contempt  of 
the  king,  who,  in  consequence,  summoned  him  be- 
fore a  national  assembly,  held  6th  October,  1164, 
at  Northampton.  Becket  was  condemned  by  the 
unanimous  voice  of  bishops  and  barons,  and  sen- 
tenced to  the  forfeiture  of  all  his  goods  and  chattels. 
He  was  also  accused  of  having  confiscated  sums  of 
money  entrusted  to  him  three  or  four  years  ago, 
when  he  was  chancellor ;  the  charge  was  evidently 
invented  for  the  occasion,  otherwise,  why  had  it  not 
been  brought  forward  before  ?  at  any  rate,  it  was 
a  direct  breach  of  faith  on  the  part  of  the  king,  for 
Becket  had  accepted  the  archbishopric  on  the  condi- 
tion that  he  was  freed  from  all  secular  obligations. 
However,  the  archbishop  was  humbled ;  he  who 
forbade  the  clergy  to  be  cited  before  the  king's 
courts,  had  himself  been  condemned  before  a  lay 
tribunal ;  he  who  had  kept  a  retinue  equal  to  that 
of  kings  and  emperors,  was  reduced  to  beggary. 

Becket,  seeing  clearly  that  an  undying  persecution 
was  being  carried  on  against  him,  warned  also  that 
his  life  was  in  danger,  escaped  to  France,  where 


'  Hook,  ii.  415. 


THOMAS  A  BECKET  AND  HENRY  H. 


171 


he  was  received  with  every  mark  of  compassion  and 
respect  by  the  king  at  Soissons,  and  by  Pope  Alex- 
ander, who  was  then  residing  at  Sens. 

He  found  that  an  embassy  sent  by  Henry,  con- 
sisting of  the  Archbishop  of  York,  the  Bishops  of 
London,  Chichester,  Exeter,  and  Worcester,  had  ar- 
rived before  him,  and  had  already  represented  the 
king's  case  to  the  Pope,  with  a  request  that  he 
would  send  the  archbishop  back  to  England,  and 
also  a  legate  a  latere  to  investigate  the  charges 
against  him.  But  when  the  Pope  read  for  the  first 
time  the  Constitutions  of  Clarendon,  he  called  them 
not  "  customs,"  but  "  tyrannical  usurpations ;"  he 
censured  the  conduct  of  Becket  and  the  bishops  in 
having  accepted  them,  and  seemed  disposed  to  ad- 
vocate Becket's  cause.  Becket,  with  tears  in  his 
eyes,  lamented  his  shortcomings,  and,  as  a  mark  of 
shame  and  contrition,  resigned  his  archbishopric 
into  the  Pope's  hands,  who,  however,  after  three 
days,  reinstated  him  in  the  primacy. 

Still  Alexander  dared  not  act  an  open  part  for 
fear  of  offending  Henry,  and  for  six  years  Becket 
remained  in  exile.  At  first  he  selected  as  his  abode 
the  monastery  of  Pontigny,  about  twelve  leagues 
from  Sens,  where  he  adopted  the  monastic  habit, 
and  the  strict  discipline  of  the  Cistercian  monks. 
The  king  stooped  to  the  meanest  acts  of  vengeance. 
Not  only  did  he  confiscate  the  revenues  of  the  see 
as  well  as  the  property  of  those  who  followed  him, 
or  prayed  for  him  in  the  churches,  but  he  banished 
from  England  even  his  innocent  friends  and  rela- 
tions, without  respect  to  age  or  sex,  so  that  four 
hundred  persons  were  thus,  in  the  dead  of  winter, 
exposed  to  starvation  in  a  foreign  land,  and  thrown 


172 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


upon  the  charity  of  the  monasteries  of  France,  which 
afforded  them  the  sheker  denied  them  in  their  own 
country.  Henry  even  threatened  to  seize  all  the 
monasteries  of  the  Cistercians,  because  the  monas- 
tery which  was  affording  him  a  refuge  belonged  to 
that  order.  Becket,  in  consequence,  removed  to 
Sens,  and  sought  refuge  in  the  monastery  of  St. 
Columba  for  the  rest  of  his  exile. 

Henry  thought  by  his  cruel  conduct  to  humble  the 
archbishop  to  obedience,  but  he  was  mistaken.  For 
a  time  Becket  was  dissuaded  by  Pope  Alexander 
from  resorting  to  extreme  measures,  but  he  now 
determined  to  resort,  if  necessary,  to  excommuni- 
cation. On  Ascension  Day,  a.d.  1166,  he  publicly 
annulled  from  the  pulpit  of  a  neighbouring  church 
the  Constitutions  of  Clarendon,  and  excommunicated 
many  of  his  opponents ;  he  also  threatened  to  visit 
the  king,  if  he  still  remained  hardened,  with  the  same 
punishment. 

Henry  was  seriously  alarmed ;  at  one  time  he 
thought  of  forsaking  Alexander,  and  recognising  the 
rival  Pope ;  but  he  thought  better  of  the  plan,  and 
in  his  fear  he  urged  the  bishops  to  do  what  was  ex- 
pressly forbidden  by  the  Constitutions  of  Clarendon — 
to  appeal  from  the  archbishop  to  the  Pope,  who  in 
vain  tried  to  bring  about  a  reconciliation. 

The  king  for  some  political  reasons  wished  his  son, 
the  young  Prince  Henry,  to  be  associated  with  him 
in  the  kingdom ;  and  he  was  accordingly  crowned  by 
the  Archbishop  of  York,  assisted  by  the  Bishops  of 
London  and  Salisbury,  and  several  other  prelates.  This 
was  in  direct  contravention  of  the  rights  of  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  ;  the  Pope  had  also  sent  to  Eng- 
land letters  (which,  however,  seem  not  to  have  arrived 


THOMAS  A  BECKET  AND  HENRY  H. 


till  after  the  event)  forbidding  the  Archbishop  of  York 
to  officiate  at  the  coronation.  The  Pope  now  threat- 
ened Henry  himself,  who  therefore  saw  that  he  must 
submit.  A  meeting  between  the  archbishop  and  king 
was  arranged  at  Fretville.  The  king's  change  of  manner 
affected  the  archbishop,  and  Becket  dismounted  from 
his  horse  and  threw  himself  at  the  king's  feet ;  who,  in 
his  turn,  holding  his  stirrup,  forced  him  to  re-mount. 
Becket  was  allowed  to  return  to  England,  although 
with  the  inward  conviction  that  he  was  returning  for 
certain  death.  Henry  broke  every  agreement  he  had 
made  with  him  ;  the  reconciliation  had  taken  place  in 
July,  in  October  the  Pope  threatened  Henry  with  an 
interdict  unless  he  performed  what  he  then  promised. 
Henry  had  confiscated  all  the  archbishop's  property, 
and  had  promised  money  to  enable  him  to  return  ; 
he  did  not  perform  even  this,  and  the  Archbishop  of 
Rouen  supplied  him  with  three  hundred  pounds  of 
his  own  money. 

On  his  arrival  in  England,  only  thirty  days  before 
his  death,  the  people  of  Canterbury,  especially  the 
poor,  flocked  round  him,  threw  their  garments  in  the 
way,  and  asked  his  blessing ;  whilst  cries  met  him  on 
all  sides  (in  the  language  of  welcome  accorded  to  re- 
ligious persons  in  the  Middle  Ages),  "  Blessed  is  he 
that  Cometh  in  the  Name  of  the  Lord." 

One  of  his  first  steps  was  to  excommunicate  those 
bishops  who  had  gone  most  against  him.  When  the 
king,  who  was  in  Normandy,  heard  of  this,  in  one  of 
those  fits  of  ungovernable  passion,  which  made  him 
more  like  a  wild  beast  than  a  human  being,  he  asked, 
"  Will  none  of  my  cowardly  followers  rid  me  from  this 
turbulent  priest?"  These  words  were  construed  into 
a  wish  on  the  king's  part  for  Becket's  death.  Four 


174 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


knights  of  Henry's  court,  who  were  present — Fitzurse, 
De  Tracy,  De  Moreville,  and  Richard  Brito — set  off  the 
same  day  for  Canterbury,  and  proceeded  to  the  arch- 
bishop's palace.  When  Becket  disdained  to  fly,  the 
monks  forced  him  into  the  cathedral,  the  doors  of 
which,  in  order  not  to  convert  the  sacred  place  into 
a  fortress,  Becket  with  his  own  hands  opened ;  and 
here,  attended  by  three  faithful  followers,  Robert  of 
Merton,  his  old  instructor,  Fitz  Stephen,  his  chaplain, 
and  Grim,  a  monk,  he  calmly  awaited  his  fate.  It  was 
about  5  p.m.  of  December  29,  11 70,  the  time  of  Ves- 
pers. The  knights,  clad  in  mail,  with  their  vizors 
down  and  their  swords  drawn,  forced  their  way  into 
the  cathedral,  Fitzurse  leading  the  way.  Two  safe 
places  of  refuge,  the  crypt  and  the  chapel  of  St.  Blaize 
in  the  roof,  were  pointed  out  to  the  archbishop,  but 
even  then  he  refused  to  avail  himself  of  the  escape. 
Next  they  pointed  out  the  choir,  thinking  its  sacred- 
ness  would  awe  his  assailants.  But  Becket  awaited 
them  in  the  transept,  afterwards  known  as  "  the  Mar- 
tyrdom." First  came  Fitzurse,  his  sword  in  one  hand 
and  a  carpenter's  axe  in  the  other  ;  but  so  great  was 
the  horror  that  such  an  act  of  sacrilege  raised  even 
in  the  minds  of  those  murderers,  that  Fitzurse,  seizing 
Becket  by  the  collar,  tried  to  drag  him  out  of  the 
church.  But  it  was  in  vain  ;  the  archbishop  resisted 
with  all  his  might,  and  threw  one  of  them,  De  Tracy, 
to  the  ground.  The  first  blow — which  Grim  trying  to 
parry,  had  his  arm  broken — dashed  off  his  cap.  The 
archbishop,  with  clasped  hands  and  bent  knee,  ex- 
claimed, "  I  commit  myself  to  God,  to  St.  Denis  of 
France,  to  St.  Alfege,  and  to  the  saints  of  the  Church." 
Then,  wiping  away  the  blood  which  trickled  from  the 
wound,  he  exclaimed,  "  Into  Thy  hands,  O  Lord,  I 


THOMAS  A  BECKET  AND   HENRY  II, 


commend  my  spirit."  A  second  blow  on  the  head 
made  him  draw  back,  as  if  stunned  ;  at  a  third,  he 
sank  on  his  knees  before  the  altar  of  St.  Benedict,  his 
hands  folded  in  prayer,  whilst  his  feeble  voice  could 
scarcely  articulate,  "  For  the  Name  of  Jesus  and  the 
defence  of  the  Church  I  am  willing  to  die ; "  as  he 
spoke,  he  fell  on  his  face  with  such  dignity  that  his 
mantle,  which  covered  his  whole  body,  was  not  dis- 
arranged. In  this  posture  he  received  such  a  tre- 
mendous blow  that  the  scalp  was  severed  from  the 
skull,  and  the  sword  snapt  in  two  on  the  marble  pave- 
ment. A  sub-deacon,  who  had  joined  the  party  as  it 
entered  the  church,  being  taunted  because  he  had 
taken  no  share  in  the  deed,  planted  his  foot  on  the 
neck  of  the  corpse,  thrust  his  sword  into  the  wound, 
and  scattered  the  brains  over  the  pavement.  "  Let 
us  go,  let  us  go,"  he  said  ;  "  the  traitor  is  dead  :  he 
will  rise  no  more 

The  brutal  murder  was  received  with  horror  through 
the  Christian  world,  but  by  no  one  more  than  Henry 
himself.  For  three  days  he  neither  ate  nor  drank, 
and  shutting  himself  in  his  chamber,  refused  to  have 
any  communication  with  the  world. 

But  the  cause  for  which  Becket  had  contended,  and 
for  which  he  died,  triumphed.  There  was  nothing 
Henry  feared  so  much  as  excommunication.  He  was 
obliged  to  humble  himself,  and  send  envoys  to  the 
Pope  to  plead  his  innocence,  and  to  express  his  readi- 
ness to  undergo  any  penance  the  Pope  imposed.  At 
a  meeting  at  Avranches  between  Henry  and  the  Pope's 
legates,  on  September  27,  11 72,  Henry,  in  words  at 
least,  conceded  everything  for  which  Becket  had  con- 
tended ;  he  would  give  up  all  customs  introduced  dur- 

*  Stanley's  "  Memorials  of  Canterbury." 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


ing  his  reign  prejudicial  to  the  Church  ;  he  would  re- 
store its  possessions  to  the  see  of  Canterbury ;  he 
would  maintain  for  one  year  two  hundred  knights  for 
the  defence  of  the  Holy  Land,  and  would  himself,  un- 
less excused  by  the  Pope,  go  on  a  Crusade  ;  and  (which 
shews  again  how  the  vices  of  kings  promoted  the  cause 
of  Rome)  he  allowed  appeals  from  the  English  Church 
to  the  Pope  ;  he  swore  to  recognise  Alexander,  and 
not  to  accept  any  other  in  his  place,  as  Pope. 

But  this  was  not  enough.  St.  Thomas  of  Canter- 
bury had  already  been  canonized,  and  Henry  was  in 
danger  at  home.  His  quarrel  with  the  archbishop 
filled  the  barons  with  encouragement.  They  per- 
suaded the  young  Henry  to  rebel  against  his  father ; 
the  King  of  France  invaded  Normandy,  and  the  King 
of  Scotland  invaded  England  ;  Henry  must  do  pen- 
ance at  the  tomb  of  the  martyred  archbishop,  and  thus 
make  his  peace  with  the  Church.  On  his  road  from 
Normandy  to  Canterbury,  he  fasted  on  bread  and 
water ;  when  within  sight  of  the  city,  he  laid  aside 
the  emblems  of  royalty  ;  at  St.  Dunstan's  Church  he 
dismounted  from  his  horse  ;  he  put  on  a  hair  shirt, 
and  over  all  a  rough  cloak.  Thus  dressed,  his  feet 
bare  and  bleeding  from  the  rough  flints,  he  entered 
the  cathedral  porch,  prostrated  himself  on  the  floor, 
and  with  outstretched  hands  continued  for  some  time 
in  prayer.  Then  proceeding  to  "  the  Martyrdom,"  he 
kissed  the  stone  on  which  the  saint  had  fallen.  De- 
scending into  the  crypt,  he  knelt  down  and  kissed  his 
tomb,  and  dissolved  in  tears,  he  groaned  forth  his 
prayers.  Then  in  the  presence  of  the  monks  he  ex- 
pressed his  innocence,  except  through  his  hasty  words, 
of  the  murder ;  he  promised  to  restore  all  the  pro- 
perty he  had  confiscated,  and  to  assign  forty  pounds 


THOMAS  A  BECKET  AND  HENRY  U.  1 77 

yearly  for  candles  to  be  kept  burning  at  the  martyr's 
tomb.  After  receiving  from  the  Prior  the  kiss  of  re- 
conciliation, he  bared  his  back,  and  received  from 
every  bishop,  as  well  as  the  monks  who  were  pre- 
sent, in  all  eighty  stripes.  After  that  he  received 
absolution,  and  spent  the  whole  night  in  the  crypt 
fasting ;  the  next  morning  he  visited  the  altars  and 
shrines,  and  heard  Mass.  He  afterwards  left  for  Lon- 
don, and  when  we  are  informed  that  it  took  him  a 
week  to  arrive  there,  we  may  judge  of  the  severity 
of  his  penanced  Was  a  humbler  penance  inflicted 
on  the  emperor,  Henry  IV.,  when  he  sought  the 
pardon  of  Gregory  VH.  at  Canossa  ? 

^  Hook,  ii.  523. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


STEPHEN  LANGTON  AND  JOHN. 


HERE  is  little  of  interest  (if  we  except  the  Cru- 


sades)  in  the  history  of  the  English  Church  be- 
tween the  death  of  Becket  and  the  accession  of  King 
John.  After  two  years  and  a-half,  Richard,  a  Bene- 
dictine monk,  was  appointed  archbishop,  a  man 
whose  meekness  was  compared  to  that  of  Moses. 
Nevertheless,  in  his  primacy  occurred  such  an  un- 
seemly dispute  between  the  sees  of  Canterbury  and 
York,  that  Henry  was  obliged  to  request  the  Pope 
to  send  his  legate  into  England  to  decide  between 
the  two  archiepiscopal  litigants.  The  Pope  was  only 
too  glad  to  oblige  him,  and  Cardinal  Hugo  was  sent 
into  the  kingdom.  At  a  meeting  held  in  St.  Cathe- 
rine's Chapel  of  W estminster  Abbey,  for  the  purpose, 
a  graver  quarrel  than  ever  (we  may  call  it  a  down- 
right fight,  "  tantaene  animis  caelestibus  irae  ?")  took 
place  between  the  two  archbishops.  The  legate  had 
taken  his  seat,  with  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  on 
his  right  hand,  when  his  Grace  of  York,  who  had 
determined  beforehand  to  have  that  coveted  place, 
arrived,  and  being  unable  in  any  other  way  to  secure 
it,  sat  himself  right  down  on  the  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury's lap.  This  usurped  intrusion  was  more  than 
his  Grace  of  Canterbury's  friends  could  stand ;  the ' 
Archbishop  of  York  was  dragged  off  his  knees,  thrown 
down  on  the  ground,  and  there  (for  it  is  no  use  minc- 
ing words)  he  received  a  sound  thrashing,  and  was 
turned  out  of  the  abbey. 

The  long  contest  which  Becket  had  carried  on  with 


STEPHEN  LANGTON  AND  JOHN. 


179 


Henry  had  terminated  successfully  for  the  Church  ; 
but  one  consequence  was  the  rapid  extension  of  the 
papal  authority,  which,  ever  since  the  Norman  Con- 
quest, had  been  gradually  increasing  in  England. 
Before  the  Norman  Conquest,  the  comparative  weak- 
ness of  Rome  had  prevented  the  Pope  from  interfer- 
ing much  in  the  affairs  of  the  English  Church ;  and 
he  had  trouble  enough  to  engage  his  attention  at 
home.  Nevertheless,  the  Pope  was  always  looking  for 
an  opportunity  of  extending  his  power  in  England  : 
at  length  one  presented  itself  in  the  Norman  invasion, 
for  the  Normans  were  amongst  the  Popes  most  faith- 
ful allies ;  and  always  afterwards,  under  the  Norman 
dynasty,  the  papal  power  in  England  advanced  with 
rapid  strides,  owing,  more  than  any  other  cause,  to 
the  vices  and  oppressions  of  the  kings.  The  kings 
seized  on  the  property  of  the  Church ;  or  they  kept 
sees  vacant,  letting  the  temporalities  to  the  highest 
speculators  ;  or  they  sold  the  endowments  ;  what  could 
the  Church  do  ?  Persecuted  by  the  State,  it  must 
look  for  help  from  some  other  quarter,  and  so  it 
put  herself  under  the  protection  of  Rome.  The  Pope 
was  always  willing  to  gain  for  himself  the  credit  of 
supporting  the  oppressed  party,  and  to  frighten  the 
strong  into  subjection  by  his  spiritual  thunders ;  when 
once  this  was  done,  and  the  Crown  was  fairly  hum- 
bled, then  Rome  had  no  objection,  as  we  shall  see  in 
the  history  of  John,  to  make  the  Church  subject  to  it ; 
thus  the  papal  power  extended  itself  over  both  Church 
and  State,  by  playing  off  one  against  the  other,  and 
thus  making  both  its  subjects. 

It  was  in  the  reign  of  John  that  the  papal  power 
reached  its  greatest  height  in  this  country.  In  1199, 
John,  perhaps  the  worst  king  that  ever  reigned  in 

N  2 


i8o 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


the  country,  ascended  the  throne,  which  he  occupied 
during  the  whole,  except  the  first  year,  of  the  pon- 
tificate of  Innocent  III.,  one  of  the  most  able  pontiffs 
that  ever  occupied  the  papal  chair.  In  1205,  his 
wisest  adviser,  Archbishop  Hubert,  died,  and  it  was 
the  quarrel  as  to  who  should  succeed  him,  which 
brought  about  the  collision  between  the  Pope  and 
the  King  of  England,  and  which  led  to  the  establish- 
ment of  the  papal  authority  in  this  country. 

For  a  long  time  there  had  been  disputes  between 
the  monks  at  Canterbury  and  the  bishops  of  the  pro- 
vince, as  to  their  respective  rights  in  the  election  of 
the  metropolitan.  On  the  death  of  Hubert  in  1205, 
the  monks,  to  make  sure  of  the  election,  acting  without 
the  king's  licence,  assembled  at  night,  and  immediately 
chose  Reginald  their  sub-prior,  a  man  unknown  beyond 
the  precincts  of  the  monastery,  as  archbishop  ;  and  him 
they  despatched,  under  a  promise  of  secrecy,  in  com- 
pany of  some  monks,  for  investiture  to  Rome.  But 
Reginald  was  so  elated  by  his  unexpected  good  for- 
tune, that  he  travelled  with  great  pomp  and  ceremony  ; 
and  when  he  arrived  at  Flanders,  could  no  longer  keep 
the  secret  to  himself,  but  openly  proclaimed  it.  This 
so  shamed  the  monks  who  had  elected  him,  that,  to  es- 
cape the  king's  anger,  they  applied  to  him  for  the  conge 
d'elii^e,  and  proceeded  to  a  fresh  election.  John  there- 
upon recommended  John  de  Grey,  Bishop  of  Norwich, 
and  him  he  invested  with  the  temporalities  of  the  see, 
and  sent  to  Rome.  But  in  this  case  he  had  forgotten 
to  consult  the  suffragan  bishops,  who  therefore  com- 
plained to  the  Pope  of  the  violation  of  their  rights. 
The  Pope,  who  advanced  the  papal  claims  further  than 
any  of  his  predecessors,  here  saw  the  opportunity  of 
extending  his  influence  in  England ;  he  rejected  both 


STEPHEN  LANGTON  AND  JOHN.  l8l 

Reginald  and  the  Bishop  of  Norwich ;  and  then  he 
ordered  the  EngHsh  monks,  who  were  present  as  a 
deputation  to  Rome,  to  go  through  the  form  of  an- 
other election,  but  compelled  them,  under  threat  of 
anathema,  to  elect  Stephen  Langton.  It  was  in  vain 
that  the  monks  urged  the  necessity  of  the  king's  ap- 
proval :  Innocent  affirmed  that  such  was  not  the  case 
when  the  election  was  made  at  Rome ;  so  the  monks 
with  one  exception  acquiesced,  and  Stephen  was  con- 
secrated by  the  Pope. 

A  better  appointment  could  not  have  been  made. 
Stephen  Langton,  of  whose  early  history  little  is 
known,  was  an  Englishman,  and  a  profound  biblical 
scholar  ^  a  poet,  and  a  statesman  of  the  highest  order, 
who  by  his  learning  had  acquired  great  fame,  not  only 
in  England,  but  on  the  Continent ;  he  held  two  pre- 
bends, one  at  Notre  Dame,  the  other  at  York ;  he 
was  Chancellor  of  the  University  of  Paris,  Dean  of 
Rheims,  and  was  elected  Cardinal  of  St.  Chrysogonus, 
at  Rome,  in  his  thirty-seventh  year.  His  brother 
Simon,  as  we  shall  see,  was,  a.d.  12 15,  elected  to  the 
archbishopric  of  York ;  but  the  king  objected  to  his 
election,  thinking  that  if  two  brothers  bore  rule,  one 
in  the  northern,  the  other  in  the  southern  province, 
everything  in  England  would  be  regulated  according 
to  their  will. 

John  received  this  usurpation  of  the  rights  of  the 
Church  and  Crown  with  defiance,  and  declared  that 
he  would  rather  die  than  suffer  such  an  infringement 
of  his  prerogative ;  that  he  was  resolved  to  carry 
through  the  election  of  the  Bishop  of  Norwich  ;  he 
threatened  to  cut  off  all  communication  with  Rome ; 
and  he  wreaked  his  vengeance  on  the  offending  monks 

•  We  are  indebted  to  him  for  the  division  of  the  Bible  into  chapters. 


l82 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


by  expelling  them  from  their  monastery,  and  con- 
fiscating their  goods.  Disregarding  the  king's  threat, 
the  Pope  bestowed  on  Langton  the  pall  with  his  own 
hands,  and  charged  the  Bishops  of  London,  Ely,  and 
Worcester,  in  case  he  was  excluded  from  the  see,  to 
place  the  kingdom  under  an  interdict.  When  those 
prelates  waited  upon  John,  and  entreated  him  with 
tears  to  submit,  he  swore  by  God's  teeth  that  if  any  one 
dared  to  interdict  his  kingdom,  he  would  send  them 
all  packing  to  Rome,  and  confiscate  their  goods  :  if 
they  were  the  subjects  of  the  Pope,  he  would  pluck 
out  their  eyes,  split  their  noses,  and  so  return  them  to 
his  Holiness.  Innocent,  however,  remained  firm,  and 
in  Lent,  1208,  placed  the  kingdom  under  an  interdict, 
which  was  tantamount  to  leaving  the  innocent,  as  well 
as  those  whom  the  Pope  thought  guilty,  in  a  state  of 
heathendom.  When  we  consider  the  loss  that  this  en- 
tailed, not  on  the  bodies,  but  souls  of  Christians,  the 
question  may  surely  be  asked  whether  a  Pope,  who, 
as  far  as  in  him  lies,  consigns  thousands  of  souls  to 
perdition,  is  deserving  the  name  (we  will  not  say  of 
the  Vicar  of  Christ,  Who  came  to  seek  and  to  save 
those  who  are  lost),  but  even  of  a  Christian.  All  re- 
ligious services ;  all  Masses,  and  marriages,  and  abso- 
lutions, and  sacraments  (except  those  of  private  bap- 
tism), were  forbidden  :  the  dead  lay  unburied,  or 
buried  in  ditches,  without  a  priest ;  a  curse  was  felt 
to  rest  on  the  whole  kingdom  ;  even  the  monasteries 
were  closed ;  it  is  difficult  even  to  imagine  the  full  ex- 
tent of  the  misery  that  this  closing  of  the  monasteries 
must  have  caused,  when  the  sick  and  dying  were  un- 
able to  obtain  relief  through  those  accustomed  chan- 
nels. The  Cistercians  alone  refused,  but  were  soon 
compelled  by  the  Pope,  to  conform  to  the  interdict. 


STEPHEN  LANGTON  AND  JOHN. 


The  archbishop  lived  during  the  interdict  at  Pon- 
tigny,  and  at  that  time  was  enabled  to  prevail  with 
the  Pope  to  grant  some  relaxation.  Accordingly,  the 
baptism  of  children,  the  celebration  of  the  Holy  Eu- 
charist to  the  dying,  the  solemnization  of  marriages 
at  the  church  doors,  silent  burials,  services  in  the  mo- 
nasteries, but  without  singing ;  such  was  the  slight 
mitigation  granted  under  this  national  calamity.  For 
a  time,  as  long  as  the  curse  did  not  touch  himself, 
John  retaliated  by  banishing  the  clergy,  and  inflicting 
severe  penalties  on  their  wives ;  by  trying  those  that 
observed  the  interdict  in  the  civil  courts,  and  confis- 
cating their  goods.  A  new  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  elected 
in  1209,  sought  consecration  at  the  hands  of  the  arch- 
bishop at  Pontigny,  and  in  consequence  his  goods  were 
confiscated ;  some  few  remained  faithful  to  the  king ; 
and  in  the  dioceses  of  Winchester,  Durham,  and 
Norwich,  the  interdict  was  either  wholly  or  in  part 
unobserved. 

Soon,  however,  the  punishment  was  to  be  brought 
home  to  the  king  himself  After  two  years,  the  Pope 
proceeded  to  the  sentence  of  excommunication  against 
John.  The  effect  of  such  a  sentence  was  tremendous. 
The  king  was  placed  outside  the  pale  of  the  Church, 
and  ceased  to  be  a  Christian ;  his  subjects  were  freed 
from  obedience ;  all  persons  were  forbidden  to  have 
any  intercourse,  or  to  eat  and  drink  with  him  ;  the 
Pope  even  claimed  the  right,  in  the  last  extremity, 
of  depriving  such  a  king  of  his  throne.  Yet,  unlike 
the  powerful  Philip  Augustus  of  France,  who,  under 
an  interdict,  was  reduced  to  submission  in  seven 
months,  John,  even  when  under  the  greater  sentence 
of  excommunication,  was  able  to  hold  out  for  six  years. 
At  one  time,  Matthew  of  Paris  tells  us,  he  even  threat- 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


ened  to  turn  Mahomedan,  and  seek  the  alliance  of 
a  Mahomedan  prince,  rather  than  submit.  In  the 
midst  of  the  interdict,  he  was  able  to  make  two  suc- 
cessful expeditions  into  Wales  and  Scotland,  where 
he  crushed  a  rebellion,  which  the  hatred  of  his  sub- 
jects and  the  intrigues  of  the  Pope  had  stirred  up 
against  him. 

In  12 1 2,  Stephen  Langton,  accompanied  by  the 
Bishops  of  London  and  Ely,  went  to  Rome,  and  re- 
presented to  the  Pope  the  crimes  of  John,  and  the 
miseries  of  the  English  Church.  The  Pope  now  had 
resort  to  the  king's  deposition ;  he  proclaimed  a  cru- 
sade against  him,  which  he  placed  under  Philip  Au- 
gustus, the  King  of  France,  with  a  promise  of  a  re- 
mission of  all  his  sins,  and  succession  to  the  English 
crown.  To  meet  the  threatened  attack,  John  collected 
an  army  of  60,000  men  on  Barham  Down,  near  Can- 
terbury, and  with  such  a  powerful  army  and  the  fleet 
at  his  command,  he  might  have  defied  the  strongest 
prince  in  Europe,  Yet  at  this  very  moment  he  made 
the  most  humiliating  terms,  not  with  the  King  of 
France,  but  with  the  author  of  all  his  misfortunes, 
the  Pope. 

Under  such  circumstances,  Pandulph,  the  Pope's 
agent,  and  a  skilful  diplomatist,  had  a  meeting  with 
the  king  at  Dover.  He  pointed  out  to  him  the  danger 
of  his  situation,  and  how  the  only  escape  lay  in  recon- 
ciliation with  the  Church  :  with  this  end  in  view,  he 
must  resign  the  kingdoms  of  England  and  Ireland  to 
St.  Peter,  and  hold  them  for  the  future  in  vassalage, 
on  the  payment  of  a  yearly  tribute,  under  the  Roman 
see.  Peter,  a  hermit,  increased  the  fears  of  John  by 
prophesying  that  by  the  following  Ascension-day  he 
would  cease  to  be  king.    To  the  disgraceful  terms 


STEPHEN  LANGTON  AND  JOHN.  1 85 

offered  by  Pandulph,  John  agreed  :  he  not  only  pro- 
mised to  recognise  Stephen  Langton,  but,  to  the  great 
disgust  of  his  court,  he  resigned,  the  day  before  Ascen- 
sion-day, his  crown,  through  Pandulph,  into  the  Pope's 
hands ;  the  hermit's  prophecy  was  thus  fulfilled,  al- 
though John  hanged  him  as  a  false  prophet ;  from 
Pandulph  he  received  it  as  the  Pope's  gift,  to  be  held 
by  him  and  his  successors  as  vassals  of  the  Pope, 
under  the  annual  payment  of  looo  marks. 

With  whatever  feelings  of  indignation  Englishmen 
may  regard  this  act  of  John,  it  is  plain  that,  though 
in  making  England  a  fief  of  the  Pope  he  acted  as 
a  traitor,  he  acted  also  with  determination  and  vigour. 
The  King  of  France,  the  archbishop  and  barons  of 
England,  were  all  his  enemies  ;  he  had  wisdom  enough 
to  understand  that,  under  the  circumstances,  the  friend- 
ship of  the  Pope  was  most  valuable  to  him.  To  ob- 
tain that  friendship  he  must  pay  a  high  price,  he  must 
become  the  Pope's  vassal :  he  determined  to  pay  the 
price,  and  he  received  his  reward.  Henceforward, 
John  became  the  favourite  son  of  the  Pope ;  he  was 
regarded  at  Rome  as  a  persecuted  and  pious  king, 
and  a  model  of  excellence ;  the  Pope  threw  his  aegis 
over.a  murderer  and  a  tyrant,  and  espoused  his  cause 
against  the  barons,  against  the  archbishop,  and  against 
the  Church  of  England, 

Invited  by  the  king,  whose  word,  however,  he  would 
not  trust  without  guarantees,  Langton  returned  to 
England,  and  in  company  of  the  exiled  bishops  went 
to  meet  the  king  at  Winchester.  John  came  out  to 
meet  them,  and  throwing  himself  at  their  feet,  asked 
forgiveness  :  he  swore  allegiance  to  holy  Church,  that 
he  would  annul  all  bad  laws,  and  observe  the  old 

Hook,  ii.  693. 


i86 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


Saxon  laws  of  Edward  the  Confessor.  Whereupon, 
although  the  Church  was  still  lying  under  the  interdict, 
the  archbishop  granted  him  absolution. 

At  Michaelmas,  Innocent  sent  his  legate,  Nicolas, 
Cardinal  Bishop  of  Tusculum,  to  settle  outstanding 
debts  and  disputes.  The  legate  was  very  careful 
about  his  master's  interests ;  but  when  he  came  to 
the  claims  of  the  bishops  for  compensation,  he  shewed 
his  prejudice  for  the  king,  and  accepted  a  sum  wholly 
inadequate  in  justice  to  their  demands.  The  Pope 
felt  himself  under  an  obligation  to  John.  The  claims 
of  both  were  referred  to  Rome,  where  John  was  repre- 
sented as  a  paragon  of  piety  and  excellence,  and  the 
bishops  unreasonable  and  avaricious ;  the  Pope  de- 
cided in  favour  of  his  new  vassal,  and  issued  a  special 
bull  that  no  sentence  of  excommunication  should  be 
issued  against  him  except  by  permission  from  Rome. 
Meanwhile,  John  having  again  resigned  his  crown 
into  the  papal  legate's  hands,  and  received  it  back 
again  as  a  donation  from  the  Pope,  in  an  assembly 
held  at  St.  Paul's,  the  interdict  from  the  kingdom 
was  removed. 

The  second  act  in  the  drama  represents  Langton  as 
a  high-minded  and  able  statesman  ;  an  upholder  of  the 
liberties  of  the  country  against  both  Pope  and  king, 
and  the  author  of  Magna  Charta. 

John  had  summoned  the  barons  to  attend  him  in 
an  expedition  against  the  King  of  France.  Such, 
however,  was  the  indignation  that  prevailed  at  the 
king's  having  humbled  the  kingdom  before  a  foreign 
power  like  the  Pope,  and  such  the  universal  detesta- 
tion in  which  he  was  held  on  account  of  his  low  de- 
baucheries, which  made  him  an  unwelcome  and  unsafe 
visitor  in  any  respectable  family,  that  the  barons  re- 


STEPHEN  LANGTON  AJSfD  JOHN. 


187 


fused  to  follow  him ;  and  when  John,  secure  of  the 
favour  of  the  Pope,  determined  to  punish  their  dis- 
obedience, Langton  took  the  part  of  the  barons,  and 
shewed  himself  the  champion  of  law  and  right  against 
the  despotism  of  the  king.  He  had  acted  with  con- 
summate foresight  when  he  obtained  from  John  an 
oath  that  he  would  observe  the  laws  of  the  country. 
The  barons  had  before  acted  separately  in  their  in- 
dividual interests ;  he  now  persuaded  them  to  act 
together,  as  an  order  of  the  realm,  for  a  definite  object. 
The  first  step  in  this  direction  was  taken  in  a  council 
at  St.  Alban's,  held  on  4th  August,  12 13,  which  was 
attended  not  only  by  the  barons,  but  by  chosen  men 
throughout  the  country,  and  was  thus  the  first  instance 
of  representatives  attending  the  national  council.  The 
council  ordained  that  the  laws  of  Henry  I.  should  be 
observed.  Those  laws  were  the  old  Saxon  laws,  first 
made  by  Edward  the  Confessor,  and  afterwards  con- 
firmed by  Henry  I.,  but  which  had  been  lost,  and 
well-nigh  forgotten.  Langton,  however,  had  just  dis- 
covered the  charter.  This  was  what  John  had  sworn 
to  observe,  and  this  Langton  produced  at  a  second 
meeting  held  in  St.  Paul's  on  25th  August.  The 
charter  was  at  once  welcomed  as  a  basis  of  national 
action ;  and  on  this  the  bishops  and  barons  deter- 
mined to  take  their  stand,  binding  themselves  by 
oath  to  defend  and,  if  necessary,  to  die  for,  their 
rights  :  and  the  compact  was  ratified  on  the  22nd 
November,  in  the  chapel  of  St.  Edmond  at  St.  Ed- 
mondsbury. 

Meanwhile,  the  king  had  assembled  an  army  against 
the  barons.  Backed  by  the  papal  legate,  he  swore  he 
would  never  consent  to  the  charter.  He  tried  to  de- 
tach the  bishops  from  the  barons,  by  offering  them  en- 


i88 


THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 


tire  freedom  of  election  to  their  sees ;  he  surrounded 
himself  with  foreign  mercenaries  ;  he  even  took  the 
Cross  and  vows  of  a  crusader  (for  against  such  it  was 
a  sacrilege  to  make  war)  from  the  hands  of  the  Bishop 
of  London.  But  the  barons,  people,  and  clergy  were 
all  against  him.  They  named  their  army,  "  the  army 
of  God  and  of  the  Church,"  and  appointed  Fitz-Walter 
as  their  marshal ;  it  was  the  army  not  only  of  the 
barons  against  the  king,  but  of  the  Church  against 
the  Pope.  Langton  presented  a  list  of  their  require- 
ments to  the  king ;  the  king  was  taken  by  surprise. 
"  Why  do  you  not  demand  my  kingdom  also  ?  "  he 
asked,  and  he  swore  by  God's  teeth  he  would  never 
yield. 

But  now  his  few  supporters  deserted  his  cause,  and 
joined  "  the  army  of  God  and  of  the  Church."  The 
country  arose  as  one  man  against  King  and  Pope.  His 
cause  was  hopelessly  lost ;  he  found  himself  with  only 
seven  knights  at  his  back,  and  a  whole  nation  in  arms 
against  him ;  he  flattered  himself  that  his  friend  the 
Pope  was  suzerain  of  England,  and  that  the  charter 
would  not  be  valid  without  his  consent ;  yet  he  had 
no  time  to  apply  to  the  Pope.  Nursing  wrath  in  his 
heart,  he  bowed  his  back  to  necessity.  He  summoned 
his  barons  to  meet  him  at  Runnymede,  a  meadow  by 
the  Thames,  near  Windsor,  and  there  he  sealed  (al- 
though his  oath  was  not  worth  the  paper  it  was  writ- 
ten on,  and  he  never  meant  to  keep  it),  on  June  15, 
1215,  Magna  CWta. 

It  was  Langton's  act.  By  that  charter  (which  pro- 
bably, more  than  any  episcopal  act  of  his  life,  has  ren- 
dered his  name  famous  to  posterity)  Langton  obtained 
for  the  country  the  fundamental  principles  of  Eng- 
lish liberty;  but  whilst  remembering  his  duty  to  his 


STEPHEN  LANGTON  AND  JOHN.  1 89 

country,  he  was  never  forgetful  of  the  Church,  which 
he  served  so  faithfully  as  its  Primate,  for  the  first 
article  declares  that  "  the  Church  of  England  shall 
be  free,  and  have  her  rights  entire  and  her  liberties 
Uninjured." 

The  first  thing  the  king  did  was  to  send  Pandulph 
to  represent  that,  as  he  was  a  vassal  of  Rome,  an  in- 
sult had  been  offered  to  the  Pope  no  less  than  to  him- 
self, and  to  get  the  new  charter  annulled.  Innocent, 
angry  at  this  conduct  towards  his  vassal,  asked,  "  Is 
it  true  do  these  barons  mean  to  dethrone  their  king, 
who  has  taken  the  Cross,  and  is  under  the  protection 
of  the  Apostolic  see  ?  Do  these  barons  dare  to  trans- 
fer the  patrimony  of  the  Church  of  Rome  ?  By  St. 
Peter,  we  will  not  permit  this  outrage  to  go  unpun- 
ished." On  August  24  he  issued  a  bull,  in  which,  after 
declaring  that  England  was  a  fief  of  the  holy  see, 
that  the  king  had  no  power  to  act  without  consent 
of  the  Pope,  that  the  conduct  of  the  barons  was  a  piece 
of  audacious  wickedness  and  contempt  of  the  holy 
see,  he  then  annulled  Magna  Charta,  forbade  the 
king  to  observe  it,  and  placed  the  same  command 
upon  the  barons.  This  bull  being  treated  with  con- 
tempt, he  ordered  Langton  to  excommunicate  the 
barons.  Against  Langton,  whom  he  had  expected 
to  be  a  pliant  tool,  the  Pope  was  especially  wrathful, 
not  only  on  account  of  the  support  he  had  given  to 
the  barons,  but  also  of  his  opposition  to  his  legate, 
Nicolas.  Langton  refused  to  execute  the  bull,  and 
was  suspended,  and  the  suspension  was  confirmed  at 
the  Lateran  Council  ^  a.d.  12 15,  at  which  Langton 
was  present;  and  although  it  was  afterwards  taken 

"  At  this  council,  the  Roman  doctrine  of  Transubstantiation  was  for 
the  first  time  authoritatively  established. 


igO  THE  ANGLO-NORMAN  CHURCH. 

off,  he  was  not  allowed  to  return  to  England  during 
the  reign  of  John.  The  people  of  England,  to  shew 
their  gratitude,  elected  his  brother  Simon  Archbishop 
of  York ;  but  by  this  time  the  Pope  had  claimed  the 
power  of  annulling  the  election  of  the  chapters,  and 
so  in  his  place  Walter  de  Grey,  the  king's  nominee, 
was  appointed. 

On  his  return  to  England  in  12 18,  two  years  after 
the  death  of  Innocent  and  King  John,  at  a  council 
held  in  London  he  set  his  seal  to  the  new  document 
of  Magna  Charta,  which  those  who  acted  for  the 
young  king,  Henry  III.,  who  was  only  nine  years  old, 
had  accepted  with  a  few  alterations.  Nothing  can 
shew  more  plainly  the  disinterestedness  and  consis- 
tency of  Langton's  character,  than  his  conduct  through- 
out the  transactions  of  Magna  Charta.  Though  a  de- 
voted member  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  of  which  he 
was  a  cardinal,  he  never  forgot  his  duty  to  his  country 
and  Church  of  England ;  he  was  willing  to  pay  obe- 
dience to  the  Pope  when  he  was  right,  but  when  he  felt 
that  he  was  acting  unjustly,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  op- 
pose a  Pope  who  was  perhaps  the  strongest  that  ever 
presided  over  the  Roman  Church. 

The  worst  feature  in  the  primacy  of  Langton  was 
his  severity  in  enforcing  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy. 
In  a  synod  held  at  Osney,  near  Oxford,  at  which  he 
presided,  one  of  the  canons  enacted  speaks  of  the 
wives  of  the  clergy  as  concubines ;  if  the  clergy  re- 
fuse to  abandon  their  wives,  they  were  to  be  deprived 
of  their  benefices,  the  wives  were  to  be  expelled  from 
the  churches,  and  if  they  persisted,  they  were  to  be 
excommunicated  and  to  be  denied  Christian  burial. 


PART  IV. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  ROMAN  CHURCH  AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM. 

TTAVING  traced  the  history  of  the  Church  in  Eng- 
land  from  its  foundation  to  the  time  when,  through 
the  fault  of  its  kings,  it  was  brought  into  subjection  to 
a  foreign  see,  we  now  purpose  to  give  a  short  account 
of  the  rise  ^  and  progress  of  the  Roman  Church,  in 
order  that  we  may  understand  how  that  Church  came 
in  time  to  hold  such  a  supremacy,  not  only  in  Eng- 
land, but  also  amongst  the  other  Churches  of  Chris- 
tendom. 

Our  Saviour  had  said  to  St.  Peter,  "  Thou  art  Peter 
(HeVpoy),  and  upon  ^/iis  selfsame  rock  (eVt  ravrr}  rrj 
Uerpa)  I  will  build  My  Church "  ("  Tu  es  Petrus  et 
super  hanc  Petram  aedificabo  ecclesiam  meam").  There 
is  no  difficulty  in  supposing  (although  other  interpre- 
tations have  been  given)  that  by  that  rock  our  Sa- 
viour might  mean  St.  Peter.  It  is  the  least  forced 
interpretation.  Our  Lord  also  was  speaking,  not  in 
Greek  or  Latin,  but  in  the  Syriac  language,  in  which 

"  It  has  been  asserted  that  the  foundation  of  the  British  Church  was 
prior  in  date  to  that  of  the  Roman  :  cf  Crakanthorp,  Def.  Eccl.  Angl., 
p.  23,  "  De  Britannica  Ecclesia  nostra  liquidum  est  fuisse  illam  aliquot 
ante  Romanam  annis  fundatam  Disce  Romanam  ecclesiam  Britan- 
nica? nostraa  non  matrem  sed  sororem,  atque  sororem  integro  qiiinqueii- 
nio  minorem." 


192 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


the  same  word,  Cepha  (the  name  which  our  Saviour 
Himself  had  given  Peter,  St.  John  i.  42)  means  either 
the  name  of  the  Apostle  or  a  rock  ;  He  was  also  speak- 
ing to  Peter,  and  that  He  should  have  told  him  (what 
he  knew  already)  that  his  name  was  Cephas,  is  incom- 
prehensible ;  whereas,  that  He  should  have  told  him 
so  in  order  to  explain  its  meaning,  is  intelligible 
enough. 

But  the  Church  which  St.  Peter  founded  was  not 
at  Rome,  but  Jerusalem,  which,  we  have  only  to  refer 
to  Acts  ii.  to  see,  was  founded  by  St.  Peter  as  the 
mother  of  all  Churches  ^  :  as  Bishop  Pearson  says, 
"  When  He  ascended  into  heaven  and  the  Holy 
Ghost  came  down,  when  Peter  had  converted  three 
thousand  souls  which  were  added  to  the  hundred- 
and-twenty  disciples,  t/ien  there  was  a  Church,  and 
that  built  upon  Peter,  according  to  our  Saviour  s  pro- 
mised 

"  It  is  evident  unto  all  men  diligently  reading  the 
Holy  Scripture  and  ancient  authors,  that  from  the 
Apostles'  time  there  have  been  three  orders  in  Christ's 
Church,  bishops,  priests,  and  deacons  ^"  From  time 
to  time  the  bishops  of  neighbouring  Churches  used 
to  meet  together  for  consultation  ^  in  the  metropolis 
or  chief  city  of  each  district ;  hence  the  metropolitan 
bishops  by  degrees  acquired  a  pre-eminence,  whilst 
at  a  later  time  a  still  higher  authority  attached,  under 
the  title  of  Patriarch,  to  the  bishops  of  the  three  seats 

When  the  Council  of  Trent  speaks  of  the  Roman  Church  "omnium 
ecclesiarum  matrem  et  majestram  agnosco,"  it  is  historically  untrue. 
Cf.  Theodor.  v.  9,  t^s  hi  fitfrpos  anaa&v  rav  ^'EKKXtjaiav  Trjs  fv  'Upo- 
o-vXv/iots.  '  Ordination  Office. 

"  Let  there  be  a  synod  of  bishops  twice  every  year ;  the  first  on 
the  fourth  week  after  Easter,  the  other  on  the  12th  day  of  October." — 
(Apost.  Const.,  37.) 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM. 


of  government,  Rome,  Alexandria,  and  Antioch  to 
which,  at  a  later  period,  were  added  the  Church  of 
Constantinople,  as  the  seat  of  empire,  and  the  Church 
of  Jerusalem,  on  account  of  the  sacred  associations 
connected  with  it.  But  to  none  of  these  was  juris- 
diction given  over  other  Churches  ^ 

The  Patriarchate  of  Rome  was  confined  to  what, 
from  their  vicinity  to  Rome,  were  called  the  "  sub- 
urbicarian "  provinces  ^  including  middle  and  lower 
Italy  (about  seventy  bishoprics  in  Northern  Italy 
being  subject  to  the  Archbishop  of  Milan),  Sicily, 
Sardinia,  and  Corsica,  in  all  about  two  hundred  sees. 

From  very  early  times  an  honorary  precedence  was 
given  to  the  Church  of  Rome  as  being  the  Church 
of  the  imperial  city ;  that  great  city  which,  at  the  com- 
mencement of  Christianity,  stood  conspicuous  amongst 

'  These  three  are  recognised  as  the  principal  sees  by  the  sixth  Canon 
of  the  Council  of  Nice,  whilst  by  Canon  7  the  next  place  is  given  to 
the  Bishop  of  ^lia  (Jerusalem). 

'  Besides  these,  there  were  other  Churches  which  were  called  airo- 
Ki^aKoi  (a  term  often  found  in  early  Church  history),  amongst  which 
Balsamon  reckons  the  metropolitans  of  Bulgaria,  Cyprus,  Iberia,  and 
Armenia.  Such  was  also  the  Church  of  Britain,  the  archbishop  of  which 
was  termed  "  alterius  orbis  papa,"  "  princeps  episcoporum  Angliae,"  "  pon- 
tifex  summus,"  "  patriarcha,"  "  primas  ; "  whilst  his  cathedral  was  "  ca- 
thedra patriarchalis  Anglorum,"  and  he  himself  was  said  to  perform 
"  vices  Apostolicas  in  Anglifi." — (Twysden's  Vind.  of  the  Church,  p.  22.) 
"  Ecclesia  Britannica  erat  aiTOK((f)a\os,  nulli  extraneo  episcopo,  sed  suo 
soli  metropolitano  subjacens." — (Bish.  Beveridge,  ad  Can.  Cone.  Nic.) 

*  Rufinus  {Hist.  Eccl.)  a  Roman  priest  of  the  fourth  century,  and 
therefore  an  unexceptionable  authority  as  to  the  limits  of  the  Roman 
Patriarchate,  says  :  "  In  urbe  Romd  vetusta  consuetudo  servetur  ut  .  .  . 
hie  (i.e.  Episcopus  Romanus)  Suburbicariarum  Ecclesiarum  solicitudi- 
nem  gerat."  Dupin,  himself  a  Roman  Catholic,  says  the  same  ;  "  Patri- 
archatus  Romani  non  videntur  excessisse  provincias  eas,  quae  Vicario 
urbis  parebant,  dicunturque  a  Rufino  suburbicariae.  ...  In  aliis  pro- 
vinciis  minimi  suburbicariis  jus  ordinationum  pontificem  Romanum  ha- 
buisse  probari  non  potest.  .  .  .  Nihilominus  tamen  successu  temporis 
Romanus  Pontifex  partriarchatus  sui  limites,  quantum  potuit,  extendit." 

O 


194 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


the  nations  of  the  earth,  the  wealthy  and  enlightened 
capital  of  the  world,  the  centre  of  civilization  and  au- 
thority. Other  circumstances  favoured  the  Roman 
Church ;  its  apostolical  foundation,  the  number  of 
its  martyrs,  its  wealth  and  charity,  the  high  character 
of  its  bishops,  the  purity  of  its  faith  from  the  theo- 
logical speculations  which  harassed  the  East.  And 
as  time  went  on,  and  the  barbarians  were  at  the  gates 
of  Rome,  as  faith  in  the  empire  began  to  wane,  a  de- 
sire arose  for  something,  universal  and  eternal,  to  take 
its  place; — for  a  belief  widely  prevailed  that,  when 
Rome  fell,  the  end  of  all  things  would  arrive,  and  with 
it  would  fall  the  world  Unity  also  was  necessary, 
and  this  unity  must  have  a  centre  ;  there  was  one 
empire  throughout  which  Rome  was  the  capital ;  why 
should  there  not  be  one  co-extensive  Church  also,  of 
which  the  Church  of  the  empire  should  be  the  centre 
and  the  head  ?  The  idea  of  a  universal  Church,  under 
one  head,  was  a  grand  one  ;  it  was  the  foundation  of 
the  advancement  of  the  Roman  Church.  As  to  any 
primacy  attaching  to  Rome  de  jure  divmo,  Scripture 
and  Catholic  tradition  are  entirely  silent';  the  su- 
premacy of  St.  Peter  was  an  afterthought. 

The  Roman  Church,  presuming  upon  the  accident 
of  its  position  as  the  Church  of  the  Roman  empire, 
tried,  at  an  early  date,  to  assert  some  vague  right  over 
other  Churches,  which  being  asserted  in  a  dictatorial 

"  Cum  caput  illud  orbis  occiderit  .  .  .  quis  dubitet  venisse  jam 
finem  rebus  humanis,  orbique  terrarum?" — (Lactantius,  Div.  Inst.) 

'  Bailly  {de  Ecc.  Christ.,  ii.  p.  310),  a  learned  Roman  theologian,  says  : 
"Jure  communi  ac  Christi  institute,  Pontifex  immediatam  jurisdictionem 
in  alienis  dicEcesibus  non  habet  neque  in  illis  episcoporum  munia  exercere 
potest."  Gregory  the  Great  says  :  "  Si  sua  unicuique  episcopo  juris- 
dictio  non  servetur,  quid  aliud  agitur  nisi  ut  per  nos,  per  quos  eccle- 
siasticos  custodiri  debuit  ordo,  confundatur  ?" 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM. 


manner,  was  entirely  ignored  :  as,  for  instance,  at  the 
end  of  the  second  century,  in  the  dispute  between  the 
Asiatic  bishops,  and  Victor,  Bishop  of  Rome,  with  re- 
gard to  the  proper  time  of  observing  Easter  ;  and  in 
that  between  Stephen,  Bishop  of  Rome,  and  St.  Cy- 
prian ^  Bishop  of  Carthage,  with  regard  to  those  who 
had  lapsed  during  the  Decian  persecution. 

In  the  fourth  century  the  thin  end  of  the  wedge, 
which  led  to  Rome's  after  supremacy,  was  first  inserted. 
A  step  was  gained  in  the  removal  by  Constantine  of 
the  seat  of  empire  to  Constantinople.  Henceforward, 
Rome  being  at  a  distance,  became  more  free  and  inde- 
pendent, whilst  the  Bishops  of  Constantinople,  being 
under  the  very  eyes  of  the  emperor,  became  harassed 
and  cramped  in  their  actions ;  their  influence  also  was 
weakened  by  constant  quarrels  with  the  emperors, 
who  found  it  to  their  advantage  to  court  the  Bishops 
of  Rome,  and  to  use  them  as  a  check  upon  their  own 
patriarchs.  Added  to  this,  in  the  frequent  dissensions 
of  the  Eastern  bishops  amongst  themselves,  the  alli- 
ance of  Rome,  as  the  principal  see  of  the  West,  was 
eagerly  sought  for,  and  the  jealousy  of  the  suffra- 
gan bishops  made  them  prefer  giving  obedience  to 
a  foreign  master,  rather  than  to  a  superior  nearer 
home ;  and  what  was  at  first  given  as  advice,  gra- 
dually assumed  the  character  of  a  command. 

The  appellate  jurisdiction  given  to  Rome  by  the 
Council  of  Sardica,  a.d.  347,  has  been  much  over- 
rated ;  that  it  was  new,  and  not  primitive,  is  evident, 

St.  Cyprian,  although  a  great  admirer  of  Rome,  says  :  "  Neque  enim 
quisquam  nostrum  Episcopum  se  episcoporum  constituit,  aut  tyrannico 
terrore  ad  obsequendi  necessitatem  collegas  suos  adigit,  quando  habeat 
omnis  episcopus  pro  licentia  libertatis  et  potestatis  suae  arbitrium  pro- 
prium,  tamque  judicare  ab  alio  non  possit,  quam  nec  ipse  potest  alium 
judicare." 

O  2 


196 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


for  it  is  allowed  that  it  was  then  first  given.  It  per- 
mitted, it  did  not  require,  a  reference  to  be  made  to 
Pope  Julius,  on  account  of  the  assistance  he  had  given 
to  St.  Athanasius  and  the  orthodox  bishops  when  per- 
secuted by  the  Arians,  in  the  causes  of  bishops  who 
had  been  unjustly  condemned ^  Julius  being  men- 
tioned by  name,  and  not  his  successors,  shews  that 
the  power  was  personal to  meet  a  particular  case. 
That  a  general  appeal  was  not  acknowledged  is  clear. 
The  African  Church  denied  the  right  of  appeal  when 
claimed  by  Pope  Zosimus  ;  the  Galilean  bishops  denied 
it  in  the  case  of  Celidonius ;  the  English  bishops  in 
that  of  Wilfrid.  Moreover,  the  council  was  not  a  ge- 
neral one  ;  the  decree  was  reversed  by  the  Council  of 
Chalcedon,  which  was  a  general  one ;  the  Eastern 
bishops  were  not  present  at  it,  and  therefore  it  could 
not  be  binding  on  the  Eastern  Church".  Yet  the 
Council  of  Sardica  laid  the  foundation  of  Rome's 
power,  which,  until  the  publication  of  the  false  De- 
cretals, rested  on  no  other  basis. 

The  General  Councils  were  careful  to  forbid  bishops 
assuming  any  authority  beyond  their  own  dioceses. 
The  first  Council  of  Constantinople,  a.d.  381°,  not 
only  forbade  this,  but  it  gave  the  see  of  Constanti- 
nople a  precedence  next  to  Rome,  "forasmuch  as  it 

'  "  Osius  Episcopus  dixit  ...  si  vobis  placuit,  sancti  Petri  Apostoli 
memoriam  honoremus  ut  scribatur  ab  his  qui  causam  examinarunt, 
Julio  Romano  Episcopo." 

"  Ad  Julium,  non  ad  Papam  Romanum  ;  privilegium  Sardinense  per- 
sonale  fuit,  ideoque  cum  persona  Julii  extinctum." — (Crakenthorp,  Def.) 

"  The  Greek  canonists,  Balsamon  and  Zonaras,  maintain  that  the 
appeal  was  only  given  to  the  Churches  which  were  under  Rome,  and 
that  the  Patriarch  of  Constantinople  had  an  equal  power  over  his 
provinces. 

°  The  council  has  always  been  received  as  of  authority  ;  it  is  admitted 
that  Pope  Damasus  concurred  in  it :  "non  sine  Damasi  summi  Pontificis 
auctoritate." — (Mansi,  iii.  526.) 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM. 


197 


is  the  new  Rome."  The  fourth  general  Council  of 
Chalcedon,  a.d,  451,  placed  the  two  sees  on  an 
equality,  the  cities  of  Rome  and  Constantinople  being 
equal  in  dignity. 

The  words  of  the  Canon  are  important,  as  shewing 
that  the  privileges  granted  to  Rome  arose  not  from 
any  inherent  right,  but  because  it  was  the  imperial 
city :  "  The  fathers  have  with  good  reason  granted 
privileges  to  the  throne  of  old  Rome,  07i  account  of 
her  being  the  imperial  city ;  and  the  one  hundred  and 
fifty  bishops  beloved  of  God,  acting  with  the  same 
view,  have  given  the  like  privileges  to  the  most  holy 
throne  of  new  Rome ;  rightly  judging  that  the  city 
which  is  the  seat  of  empire  and  of  a  senate,  and  is 
equal  to  the  old  imperial  Rome  in  other  privileges, 
should  be  also  honoured  as  she  is  in  ecclesiastical 
concerns,  as  being  the  second  and  next  after  her." 
This  canon  induced  the  Patriarch  of  Constantinople 
to  put  forth  claims  over  the  Patriarchs  of  Alexandria 
and  Antioch,  not  unlike  those  afterwards  made  by 
Rome ;  it  was  also  the  cause  of  the  incessant  con- 
tentions between  the  sees  of  Rome  and  Constanti- 
nople, which  eventually  led  to  the  schism  between 
the  Latin  and  Greek  Churches 'i. 

The  Roman  see  quickly  took  advantage  of  the 
Council  of  Sardica.  The  first  encroachment  was 
soon  after  made  by  Pope  Siricius  (a.d.  385),  who,  by 
not  allowing  its  bishops  to  be  consecrated  without 
his  consent,  virtually  annexed  to  the  papacy  the  pro- 
vince of  Illyricum.    Innocent  I.,  a.d.  402,  carried  his 

Canon  28. 

*•  Leo  the  Great  (a.d.  440 — 461),  and  other  Roman  prelates,  resisted 
the  Canons  of  this,  a  general  council,  but  in  vain,  for  the  emperors 
supported  their  own  patriarchs. 


198 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


pretensions  beyond  any  of  his  predecessors  :  he  af- 
firmed that  there  was  no  Church  in  all  Italy,  Gaul, 
Spain,  Africa,  Sicily,  and  the  adjacent  islands,  which 
was  not  founded  by  St.  Peter  or  his  successors,  and 
therefore  derived  from  Rome  ;  that  the  whole  Western 
world  was  bound  to  conform  to  the  usages  of  Rome, 
though  this  had  lately  been  disallowed  by  St.  Am- 
brose ^  He  appointed  Rufus,  Archbishop  of  Thessa- 
lonica,  to  be  his  vicar  in  Illyria,  which  is  the  first 
instance  of  the  appointment  of  a  Vicar  Apostolic  ^ 

Zosimus,  his  successor,  was  the  first  Pope  to  declare 
that  the  Popes  inherited  from  St.  Peter  a  divine  au- 
thority equal  to  that  of  St.  Peter,  and  that  no  one  can 
question  the  Pope's  decision ' ;  and  yet  he  himself  had 
expressed  approval  of  the  heresy  of  Pelagius,  and  was 
obliged  to  retract  his  judgment.  When,  a.d.  418, 
Apiarius,  an  African  presbyter,  being  excommunicated 
and  degraded  for  misconduct,  applied  to  Rome,  Zosi- 
mus, in  opposition  to  the  African  bishops,  who  denied 
the  right  of  appeal,  maintained  that  such  an  appeal 
was  allowed  by  the  Council  of  Nice.  The  African 
bishops  sent  to  the  Eastern  patriarchs  for  a  copy  of 
the  Nicene  Canons,  when  they  discovered  that  the 
canon  was  not  one  of  the  Nicene,  but  the  Sardican 
Council ;  so  they  sent  to  Boniface  I.,  who  had  suc- 
ceeded Zosimus,  complaining  of  the  pride  of  Rome 
in  interferinor 

o 

'  "  In  omnibus  cupio  sequi  ecclesiam  Romanam :  sed  tamen  et  nos 
homines  sensum  habemus  ideo  quod  alibi  rectius  servatur,  et  nos  rec- 
tius  custodimus." 

'  Hussej-'s  Rise  of  the  Papal  Power,  p.  32. 

'  Alansi,  Cone.  iv.  366. 

"  When  Apiarius  again  appealed  to  Rome  during  the  pontificate  of 
Caelestine  I.,  they  not  only  disallowed  his  interference,  but  declared 
that  it  would  be  a  cause  for  excommunication. 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM. 


199 


Under  Leo  the  Great,  a.d.  440,  we  first  meet  the 
conception,  ahhough  imperfectly  realised,  of  the  papacy 
of  later  times.  Celidonius,  Bishop  of  Vienne,  having 
been  deposed  in  a  synod,  a.d.  444,  by  Hilary,  Metro- 
politan of  Aries,  appealed  to  Leo.  Hilary  denied  the 
Pope's  right  to  receive  the  appeal ;  notwithstanding 
which,  Leo  declared  the  power  of  Rome  to  be  of  un- 
broken succession  from  Apostolic  times ;  that  the 
Apostolic  see  always  had  received  appeals  from  Gaul  : 
he  restored  Celidonius,  and  obtained  from  the  Em- 
peror Valentinian  a  law  which  he  is  supposed  to  have 
dictated  himself,  that  the  Bishop  of  Rome  is  the  right- 
ful governor  of  the  whole  Church  ^  Thus  the  Pope's 
supremacy  was  now  established,  not  by  the  law  of 
Christ,  or  by  a  canon  of  the  Church  over  the  Church, 
but  by  the  Roman  law,  over  the  dominions  of  the 
Roman  emperor  of  the  West  ^ .  About  the  middle  of 
the  sixth  century,  the  Pope  claimed  the  right  of  con- 
firming the  Archbishop  of  Milan. 

But  no  decisive  progress  was  made  beyond  Italy 
until  the  time  of  Gregory  the  Great,  which  may  be 
taken  as  the  boundary  between  ancient  and  mediaeval 
Church  history.  He  appointed  legates  in  Spain  and 
Aries,  to  whom  he  gave  instructions  to  act  as  vice- 
gerents of  the  Apostolic  see,  "  quae  omnium  ecclesiarum 
caput  est."  He  sent  the  pall  (a  custom  which  had 
been  commenced  by  Pelagius  H.)  to  St.  Augustine  ; 
but  at  that  time  the  pall  could  only  be  sent  by  the 
consent  of  the  emperor,  and  was  then  (not,  as  it  after- 
wards became,  a  badge  of  servitude,  and  the  necessary 
appendage  of  an  archbishop's  office),  only  a  mark  of 
favour. 

But  Gregory  spoke  of  the  Patriarchs  of  Alexandria 

Robertson's  Church  History,  i.  482.  Hussey,  p.  64. 


200 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


and  Antioch  as  his  equals,  and  as  sharing  with  him 
a  dignity  of  rank  as  successors  of  St.  Peter.  We  find 
him  also  resisting  a  claim  which  afterwards  was  one  of 
those  most  frequently  put  forth  by  the  Popes.  When 
John  the  Faster,  Patriarch  of  Constantinople,  in  an 
Eastern  synod  arrogated  to  himself  the  title  of  (Ecu- 
menical or  Universal  Bishop,  a  title  which  had  before 
often  been  used  by  the  patriarchs  of  that  see,  Gregory 
denounced  the  title,  not  only  as  proud  and  foolish,  but 
anti- Christian  and  blasphemous,  and  unlike  the  con- 
duct of  Peter,  who,  though  the  first,  was  of  the  same 
rank  as  the  other  Apostles ;  and  referred  the  question  to 
the  Emperor  Maurice,  "  ut  piissimus  Dominus  Mauri- 
cius  ipsum  illud  negotium  judicare  dignaretur?"  His 
appeal,  however,  was  ineffectual,  and  the  Patriarchs  of 
Constantinople  continued  to  style  themselves  oecu- 
menical ^  But  the  conduct  and  words  of  Gregory  de- 
serve notice.  He  referred  the  matter,  as  we  have 
seen,  to  the  emperor,  a  course  very  different  from 
that  adopted  by  his  successors,  who  claimed  the  right 
of  deposing  emperors.  He  styles  the  act  of  John,  in 
calling  himself  "  oecumenical,"  blasphemous ;  yet,  not 
long  after.  Pope  Boniface  HI.  did  not  think  it  below 
his  dignity  to  receive  that  title  from  the  tyrant  Phocas, 
who,  from  being  a  centurion,  had  ascended  the  im- 
perial throne  after  the  brutal  murder  of  the  Emperor 
Maurice  and  his  children.  Phocas  deprived  the  Pa- 
triarch of  Constantinople  of  it,  and  conferred  it  upon 
Boniface  ;  but  this  was  again  reversed  by  the  thirty- 

'  St.  Gregory  denounces  the  title  as  "profanum  vocabulum;"  "nomen 
illud  blasphemiae;"  " superstitiorum  at  superbum  vocabulum;"  "contra 
statuta  evangelica,  contra  canonum  decreta."  He  says,  "Si  unus  Pa- 
triarcha  universalis  dicitur,  Patriarcharum  nomen  caeteris  derogatur;" 
"ego  fidenter  dico,  quia  quisquis  se  universalem  sacerdotem  vocat  vel 
vociferari  desiderat,  in  elatione  suS,  Antichristum  praecurrit." 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM. 


20I 


sixth  canon  of  the  Quinsextine  Council,  a.d.  691,  which 
declared  the  two  bishops  equal*  in  rank,  although 
Rome  had  a  precedence  of  honour. 

Amid  the  general  chaos  of  the  seventh  and  eighth 
centuries,  Rome,  although  taken  and  re-taken  by  the 
barbarians,  remained  comparatively  unscathed ;  and 
the  papacy,  aided  by  the  firm  and  enthusiastic  support 
of  the  monks,  the  most  influential  body  in  Europe, — at 
a  time  when  the  sees  of  Alexandria,  Antioch,  and 
Jerusalem  were  reduced  under  Mahomedan  rule,  and 
the  Patriarch  of  Constantinople  had  become  the  tool 
of  the  emperors — made  rapid  strides  towards  supre- 
macy ;  the  Pope,  from  being  regarded  merely  as  the 
representative  of  the  West,  now  came  to  be  regarded 
as  the  sole  successor  of  St.  Peter,  as  the  source  and 
representative  of  Christianity. 

But  it  is  to  the  French  nation  that  the  Church  of 
Rome  is  most  indebted  for  its  privileges  and  its  pre- 
eminence, as  well  as  its  temporary  power.  When 
Clovis,  King  of  the  Franks,  conquered  Gaul,  both  he 
and  his  people  were  heathens.  But  Clovis  had  mar- 
ried a  Christian,  Clotilda,  daughter  of  the  King  of  Bur- 
gundy, and  by  her  he  was  persuaded  to  receive  bap- 
tism, with  three  thousand  of  his  followers,  in  Rheims 
Cathedral,  from  the  hands  of  its  bishop,  Remigius, 
A.D.  496.  From  the  circumstance  that  he  was  con- 
verted at  a  time  when  the  princes  of  the  East  were 
Arians,  and  the  emperor  supported  the  heresy  of 
Eutyches,  the  kings  of  France  received  the  title,  which 
they  have  held  ever  since,  of  "  Eldest  Sons  of  the 

"  The  Quinsextine  Council,  being  averse  to  Rome's  supremacy,  was  not 
at  first  received  at  Rome  by  Pope  Sergius ;  but  the  next  Pope  but  one, 
John VII.,  A.D.  705,  accepted  it  without  alteration;  as  again  did  Pope 
Adrian  I.,  A.D.  787,  and  other  Popes  afterwards.    (Hussey,  p.  155.) 


202 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


Church."  From  being  the  chief  of  a  small  people, 
Clovis  became  the  founder  of  the  great  French  mon- 
archy, soon  about  to  become  the  most  powerful  of 
Catholic  nations.  For  a  long  time  the  Galilean 
Churches  resisted  the  supremacy  of  Rome,  first  the 
Bishop  of  Vienne,  and  then  the  Bishop  of  Aries, 
claiming  a  patriarchal  authority  like  that  of  Rome 
and  Constantinople.  But  from  the  time  of  Gregory 
the  Great,  successive  Popes,  who  were  gradually  fail- 
ing in  their  allegiance  to  the  emperor,  strove  to  esta- 
blish a  connexion  with  the  Frankish  princes,  as  a  means 
of  strengthening  themselves  against  the  empire.  The 
long-sought  opportunity  was  afforded  by  the  accession 
of  the  Carlovingian  dynasty ;  not  only  was  the  papacy 
enabled  to  cement  the  bonds  between  Rome  and  Gaul, 
but  also  to  shake  off  the  unwelcome  yoke  of  the  East- 
ern, and  to  lay  the  foundation  of  a  new  Western, 
empire. 

The  opportunity  arose  out  of  the  Iconoclastic  con- 
troversy. Leo  the  I  saurian,  a  man  of  low  birth,  be- 
came emperor,  a.d.  717,  and  whether  it  was  that  being 
born  amonorst  the  I  saurian  mountains  he  had  learnt  a 
simpler  faith,  or,  as  it  was  asserted,  being  influenced  by 
the  taunts  of  the  Mahometans,  who  stigmatized  the  use 
of  images  as  idolatrous'',  he  determined  to  abolish  the 
use  of  them  altogether.  In  consequence  of  this.  Pope 
Gregory  III.  (a.d.  731),  in  a  council  of  ninety-eight 
bishops,  anathematized  him,  and  excited  the  Italians  to 
renounce  their  allegiance  to  him. 

But  the  emperor  was  not  the  Pope's  only  enemy. 

It  must  be  understood  that  these  images  were  not  sculptures, 
or  statues,  for  those  the  Greek  Church  never  allowed,  but  coloured 
portraitures  on  a  plane  surface,  or,  more  rarely,  mosaics,  (Abp.  Trench, 
Med.  Ch.  Hist.,  p.  91.) 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM.  203 

The  nearest  and  most  dreaded  of  Rome's  enemies 
were  the  Lombards ;  and  the  hatred  between  them, 
which  had  originated  in  the  Arianism  of  the  latter, 
had  survived  their  conversion  to  orthodox  Christianity. 
Luitbrand,  King  of  the  Lombards,  saw  his  opportunity 
in  the  disorders  of  Italy,  and  summoned  Rome  to  ac- 
knowledge him  as  her  lawful  sovereign.  Thanks  to 
this,  the  Pope,  from  being  bishop  in  the  first  city  of 
the  world,  entered  upon  a  new  career  of  greatness, 
and,  by  a  succession  of  favouring  circumstances,  was 
raised  into  a  secular  prince.  It  was  in  vain  for  the 
Pope  to  look  to  the  Eastern  empire  for  aid ;  the 
Emperor  had  dangers  and  embarrassments  enough 
nearer  home ;  and  even  if  he  could  have  helped  him, 
the  aid  of  the  professed  enemies  of  images  would  have 
been  distasteful.  So  the  Pope  must  look  for  a  pro- 
tector to  another  quarter. 

At  this  time,  Charles  Martel,  who  by  his  late  vic- 
tory over  the  Saracens  had  saved  his  own  country, 
and  perhaps  Europe,  from  the  yoke  of  the  Mahome- 
dans,  governed  France,  under  the  title  of  Mayor  of 
the  Palace,  and  was  considered  as  the  champion  of 
Christendom.  To  him  the  Pope  applied  for  aid ;  and, 
to  strengthen  his  petition,  he  sent  him  the  keys  of 
St.  Peter's  tomb.  It  is  said  he  offered  him  the  title 
of  Consul  or  Patrician  of  Rome,  and  to  transfer  the 
allegiance  of  the  Romans  to  the  Prankish  crown.  The 
offer,  however,  came  to  nothing,  for,  a.d.  741,  both 
Gregory  and  Charles  Martel  died. 

Pepin  succeeded  his  father  as  Mayor  of  the  Palace 
to  Childeric  III.,  and  the  Pope  and  the  Franks  were 
now  in  a  position  mutually  to  assist  each  other.  Pepin 

°  This  title  designated,  in  the  later  days  of  the  empire,  the  next  dignity 
to  the  throne. 


204 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


felt  that  the  time  had  arrived  that  the  servile  title  which 
he  held  should  be  abolished,  and  the  empty  royalty  of 
the  Merovingian  dynasty  should  end.  But  to  put  an  end 
to  an  ancient  dynasty  was  no  light  matter.  If  he  could 
procure  the  approval  of  the  Church,  if  the  Roman 
pontiff  could  be  induced  to  sanction  the  revolution, 
then  the  conscience  of  the  people  might  be  satisfied. 
So  he  sent  to  the  new  Pope,  Zacharias,  who  had  been 
elected  without  the  confirmation  of  the  emperor  or 
the  exarch,  to  ask  in  the  name  of  the  French  nation 
whether  it  was  not  right  that  he  who  had  the  power, 
should  also  have  with  it  the  title  of — king.  The  answer 
of  the  Pope,  which  was  prompted  by  the  consideration 
of  his  own  interest  ^,  was,  as  might  have  been  expected, 
favourable;  and  a.d.  752,  Pepin  was  crowned  king  by 
Boniface,  Archbishop  of  Mentz,  acting  in  the  name  of 
the  Pope  (a  second  coronation  being  performed  by 
the  Pope  himself  at  St.  Denys),  and  made  Patrician  of 
Rome.  In  return,  Pepin  made  the  cause  of  the  Pope 
his  own ;  he  afforded  him  the  required  help  against 
the  Lombards,  and  bestowed  on  the  Church  a  donation 
of  a  large  tract  of  country  which  he  had  taken  from  the 
Lombards  ;  not,  indeed,  to  be  held  as  an  independent 
sovereignty,  but  under  the  Prankish  crown.  Thus 
was  laid  the  foundation  of  Rome's  temporal  power. 

Pepin  died  a.d.  768,  and  was  succeeded  by  his  son 
Charlemagne,  or  Charles  the  Great,  whose  relations 
with  the  papacy  were  to  become  still  more  intimate. 
Charlemagne  invaded  Italy,  and,  a.d.  774,  overthrew 
the  Lombard  dominion,  by  part  of  which  he  enlarged 

^  So  Gregory  VII.,  when  he  deposed  Henry  IV.,  speaks  of  it:  "Alius 
Romanus  pontifex  regem  Francorum  non  tarn  pro  suis  iniquitatibus,  quam 
eo  quod  tantaa  potestati  non  erat  utilis,  a  regno  deposuit  el  Pippinum  .  .  . 
in  ejus  loco  substituit." 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM. 


205 


the  donation  already  made  by  Pepin.  Charles  made 
several  visits  to  Rome,  during  one  of  which,  a.d.  800, 
a  remarkable  and  important  event  took  place.  On 
Christmas-day,  whilst  Charles  was  attending'  Mass  at 
St.  Peter's,  and  whilst  kneeling  before  the  altar,  the 
Pope  suddenly,  as  if  by  a  heavenly  impulse,  placed 
a  golden  crown  upon  his  head,  imitating  the  coronation 
of  the  Eastern  emperor  by  the  Patriarch  of  Constanti- 
nople, whilst  the  people  shouted,  "  Long  life  and  vic- 
tory to  the  Emperor  Charles."  The  new  emperor 
affected  surprise  and  displeasure,  but  there  is  no  doubt 
that  if  there  was  no  complicity,  there  was  a  secret 
understanding  between  the  two  principal  actors,  that 
Charlemagne  had  determined  to  be  emperor,  and  that 
he  was  displeased  only  with  the  manner  and  the  sud- 
denness with  which  the  act  had  been  performed.  It 
was  a  clever  ruse  on  the  part  of  Pope  Leo,  who  looked 
rather  to  his  own  aggrandisement  than  to  the  dignity 
he  was  conferring  on  the  emperor  :  but  the  interpre- 
tation which  was  afterwards  put  upon  the  proceeding, 
that  the  Pope  had  taken  the  empire  from  the  Greeks 
and  bestowed  it  upon  the  Germans,  that  he  therefore 
enjoyed  the  right  to  bestow  the  empire  on  his  own 
authority,  was  opposed  to  the  whole  spirit  of  Char- 
lemagne's policy,  and  the  Pope  himself  was  the  first 
to  do  homage  to  the  new  empire. 

The  papacy  had  now  become  a  necessity  to  France, 
and  the  Pope  took  advantage  of  the  weakness  of 
Charlemagne's  successors  to  shake  off  the  chain  with 
which  Charlemagne  had  bound  it.  Charlemagne,  in 
reviving  the  Western  empire,  had  intended  that  the 
emperors  should  be  masters  of  the  Popes  ;  instead 
of  this,  the  Popes  became  masters  of  the  emperors. 
Shortly  before  his  death,  Charlemagne,  having  ob- 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


tained  the  consent  of  the  National  Diet,  had  declared 
his  only  legitimate  son,  Louis,  afterwards  surnamed 
"  the  Pious,"  then  thirty-six  years  of  age,  to  be  his 
colleague  and  successor  in  the  empire.  He  desired 
him  to  approach  the  High  Altar,  and  to  take  from  it 
the  crown  and  place  it  upon  his  own  head  ;  meaning 
to  assert  by  this  act  that  his  descendants  derived  their 
title,  not  from  the  coronation  by  the  Pope,  but  direct 
from  God,  Notwithstanding  this,  Louis,  after  his  fa- 
ther's death,  submitted  to  be  crowned  again  at  the 
hands  of  Stephen  IV.  The  importance  of  this  act 
to  the  papacy  was  great.  After  this  the  Popes  con- 
tinued to  crown  the  emperors,  and  the  opinion  be- 
came established,  that  the  highest  worldly  dignities 
could  only  be  conferred  by  God  Himself,  through  the 
successor  of  St.  Peter  ;  nor  was  henceforward  the  im- 
perial title  assumed  by  the  German  sovereigns  of  Italy, 
until  they  had  been  crowned  at  Rome  by  the  hands 
of  the  Pope  ^. 

One  thing,  and  one  thing  only,  was  now  required 
to  establish  Rome's  ascendancy, — it  was  without  an 
historical  basis  ;  there  was  nothing  in  the  early  his- 
tory of  the  Church  to  warrant  its  pretensions.  Nor 
was  this  long  wanting.  At  the  close  of  the  eighth  cen- 
tury was  fabricated  one  of  the  mightiest  engines  in  the 
triumph  of  the  papacy,  a  series  of  Decretals  known 
as  the  "  Pseudo  Isidore."  Hitherto  the  Decretal 
Epistles  had  begun  with  Pope  Siricius ;  but  the  new 
writer  produced  a  number  of  letters  purporting  to  be 
written  by  St.  Clement  and  Anacletus,  the  cotempo- 
raries  of  the  Apostles,  as  well  as  the  acts  of  some 
hitherto-unknown  councils.  Thus  the  claims  of  Rome 
were  supported  by  a  continuous  chain  of  testimony 

'  Rob.,  Ch.  Hist.  ii.  460. 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM. 


207 


reaching  up  to  the  Apostles  themselves,  and  the  papal 
see  was  represented,  on  the  authority  of  ancient  usage, 
as  the  sole  and  irresponsible  directress  of  the  theocra- 
tic system  of  the  Church  ^  Amongst  other  forgeries, 
they  contained  the  famous  donation  of  Constantine  ^ ; 
the  object  of  which  was  to  shew  that  the  temporal 
power  given  by  Pepin  and  Charlemagne  was  only  the 
restitution  of  a  gift  made  by  the  first  Christian  em- 
peror, Constantine,  but  which  had  been  violently  taken 
from  the  papal  see  by  the  Lombards.  The  story  ran 
that  Constantine,  having  been  cured  of  his  leprosy 
and  baptized  by  Pope  Sylvester,  from  a  conviction 
of  the  superiority  of  the  spiritual  to  the  temporal 
power,  relinquished  Rome  to  the  Popes,  and  founded 
his  new  kingdom  of  Constantinople.  The  spurious- 
ness  of  the  Decretals,  which  was  shewn  by  several 
anachronisms  and  other  gross  instances  of  ignorance  \ 
was  detected  by  Hincmar,  Archbishop  of  Rheims, 
and  the  Gallican  bishops ;  nevertheless,  they  were 
boldly  asserted  in  a  letter  addressed  by  Pope  Adrian  I. 
to  the  second  Council  of  Nice,  a  d.  787;  they  were 
appealed  to  as  genuine  by  Pope  Nicolas  I.  (a.d.  858); 
Gratian  made  them  the  foundation  of  his  Decretum, 
the  great  book  of  Canon  Law  during  the  Middle  Ages  ; 
after  the  revival  of  learning  at  the  Reformation  (by 
which  time,  however,  they  had  done  their  work),  they 
were  universally  rejected  by  Romanists  ;  but  as  it 

'  Hardwick,  Mid.  Ages,  146. 

«  This  donation  was  said  to  comprise  not  only  the  exarchate  of  Ra- 
venna, but  the  dukedom  of  Spoleto  and  Benevento,  Venetia,  Istria,  and 
other  territory  in  the  north  of  Italy  ;  in  short,  nearly  the  whole  penin- 
sula, and  the  island  of  Corsica. 

The  title  "Peccator"  was  common  amongst  bishops  as  a  mark  of 
humility;  the  author  of  the  forged  Decretals  ascribes  them  to  Isidore 
"  Mercator." 


208 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


cannot  be  imagined  that  two  Popes  appealed  to  them 
in  bad  faith,  the  question  arises,  What  becomes  of 
the  doctrine  of  Papal  Infallibility  ? 

With  the  exception  of  a  short  gleam  of  glory  during 
the  pontificate  of  Nicolas  I,  (a.d.  858 — 867), — who 
declared  that  "  Rome  is  the  rule  of  faith  and  source 
of  absolution,"  that  "  her  judgment  is  the  voice  of 
God,"  that  "  no  question  could  be  decided  without 
the  consent  of  the  Roman  pontiff," — the  ninth  and 
tenth  centuries  are  mostly  a  period  during  which,  that 
the  history  of  the  pontiffs  is  "  a  history  of  monsters, 
a  record  of  the  most  atrocious  villainies  and  crimes, 
is  acknowledged  by  all  the  best  writers,  and  even  by 
the  advocates  of  popery  V 

For  more  than  fifty  years  (the  Dark  or  Iron  Age, 
as  it  has  been  called,  of  the  Church)  the  election  of 
Pope  lay  in  the  hands  of  three  infamous  women, 
Theodora,  and  her  two  daughters,  Theodora  and  Ma- 
rozia ;  who,  by  their  influence  with  the  profligate 
nobles,  contrived  to  procure  the  throne  of  St.  Peter 
for  their  paramours  or  illegitimate  children.  John  XI, 
(a.d.  931)  is  said  to  have  been  the  son  of  Pope  Ser- 
gius  by  Marozia.  Iniquity  reached  its  climax  under 
John  XII.,  who  (a.d.  955)  became  Pope  at  the  age 
of  eighteen''.  John,  who  was  guilty  of  the  most 
heinous  crimes,  of  even  murder,  was  deposed  (Dec.  4, 
963)  by  the  Emperor  Otho  the  Great ;  (this  shews  that 

'  Mosheim,  Cent.  X.  Romanists  neither  screen  nor  palliate  the  vices 
of  the  Popes  at  that  period ;  on  the  contrary,  they  consider  it  rather  as 
a  proof  of  the  exalted  character  of  their  Church,  that  she  could  have 
weathered  such  a  storm.  Baronius  uses  this  argument,  although  he  ad- 
mits the  Popes  were  "homines  monstruosi,  vita  turpissimi,  moribus  per- 
ditissimi,  usquequaque  foedissimi." 

His  name  had  been  Octavianus,  and  this  is  the  first  instance  of 
a  change  of  name  on  becoming  Pope. 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM. 


209 


the  emperors  could  depose  the  Popes ;)  and  the  fol- 
lowing year  was  assassinated  whilst  carrying  on  an 
adulterous  intrigue  near  Rome;  and  Leo  VIII.,  a 
man  of  good  character,  but  not  yet  in  Holy  Orders, 
was  chosen  in  his  place 

By  the  middle  of  the  eleventh  century  (a.d.  1054) 
the  power  of  the  Roman  Church  was  so  advanced, 
that  the  Pope  was  enabled  without  a  synodical  de- 
cree, and  solely  by  his  own  authority,  to  pass  a  sen- 
tence of  excommunication  upon  Michael  Cerularius, 
the  Patriarch  of  Constantinople,  which  caused  the 
unhappy  division  between  the  East  and  West,  which 
has  never  yet  been  healed.  There  had  before  been 
occasional  schisms.  In  the  middle  of  the  ninth  cen- 
tury, a  dispute  which  had  arisen  between  the  two 
Churches  about  the  province  of  Bulgaria,  both  Pho- 
tius,  Patriarch  of  Constantinople,  and  Pope  John  VIII. 
claiming  jurisdiction  over  it,  although  communion  was 
for  some  time  suspended,  had  been  healed.  But 
(a.d.  1053)  Michael  Cerularius,  a  man  of  restless  and 
uncharitable  temper,  wrote  to  the  Bishop  of  Trani 
a  letter,  which  he  desired  to  be  communicated  to  the 
Pope  and  the  whole  Western  Church,  complaining 
of  certain  rites  and  ceremonies  of  the  Roman  Church, 
and  shut  up  the  Latin  churches,  and  seized  the  mo- 
nasteries, in  Constantinople.  The  points  he  com- 
plained of  were,  the  use  of  unleavened  bread  in  the 
Holy  Eucharist,  fasting  on  Saturday,  the  eating  of 
things  strangled  and  of  blood,  and  the  singing  of  the 
Great  Hallelujah  at  Easter  only"". 

'  Hallam,  Middle  Ages,  ii.  248. 

"  Although  at  the  Institution  our  Lord  used  unleavened  bread,  that 
being  the  only  bread  allowed  under  the  Jewish  law  at  the  Paschal  season, 
the  Eastern  Church  maintained  that  the  Apostles  and  the  early  Church 

P 


2IO 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


The  Pope,  Leo,  was  naturally  indignant  at  such  high- 
handed and  unreasonable  proceedings,  but  he  con- 
trived to  put  himself  as  much  in  the  wrong  as  Ceru- 
larius.  He  appointed  three  legates,  of  whom  Cardinal 
Humbert  was  the  principal,  to  proceed  to  Constan- 
tinople, who  treated  Cerularius  with  the  greatest  dis- 
respect ;  complained  of  the  usages  of  the  Greek  Church, 
such  as  the  marriage  of  the  clergy,  and  the  omission 
of  the  "Filioque"  clause  from  the  Nicene  Creed;  and 
finally,  entering  the  church  of  St.  Sophia,  left  an  ex- 
communication on  the  altar,  at  the  time  when  it  was 
prepared  for  the  Holy  Eucharist. 

Thus  the  Church  of  Rome  severed  itself  from  the 
great  Oriental  Church,  that  Church  which  produced 
the  greatest  saints,  whom  the  Church  reverences ;  such 
as  SS.  Ignatius,  Polycarp,  Justin  Martyr,  Clement  of 
Alexandria,  Gregory  Thaumaturgus,  Athanasius,  Basil, 
Gregory  of  Nazianzum,  Gregory  of  Nyssa,  Cyril  of 
Alexandria,  Chrysostom,  Epiphanius,  and  numberless 
other  saints  and  martyrs. 

In  1073  the  famous  Hildebrand,  under  the  title  of 
Gregory  VII.,  ascended  the  papal  throne,  and  from  his 
time  the  name  of  Pope,  which  had  hitherto  been  the 
common  appellation  of  bishops,  became  the  distin- 
guishing title  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome".  The  maxims 
which  he  laid  down,  and  the  power  which  he  claimed 
for  the  Church  of  Rome,  and  the  sovereign  domina- 
tion of  the  Pope,  were  far  in  advance  of  the  Pseudo- 
Isidore  Decretals,  and  were  such  as  would  thoroughly 

used  common  bread,  and  the  word  apror  signifying  something  raised,  they 
themselves  used  leavened  bread  for  the  Sacrament.    (Robertson,  ii.  528.) 

"  Ennodius  of  Pavia,  wTiting  about  the  end  of  the  fifth  century, 
confines  the  title  to  the  Bishop  of  Rome ;  it  was  probably  so  restricted 
at  that  time  in  Italy,  but  not  so  in  other  countries  of  the  West,  till  the 
time  of  Hildebrand. 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM, 


2  I  I 


have  extinguished  every  kind  of  freedom.  In  a  coun- 
cil held  at  Rome,  a.d.  1074,  he  compares  the  first  four 
general  councils  to  the  four  Gospels ;  and  yet  they 
were  not  to  be  so  highly  reverenced  as  the  decrees  of 
Popes,  for  that  those  councils  would  have  had  no 
force,  unless  they  had  been  confirmed  by  the  Aposto- 
lic authority  of  the  Roman  pontiffs  °. 

Pope  Alexander  II.,  the  immediate  predecessor  of 
Hildebrand,  had  assumed  the  right  of  conferring  tem- 
poral sovereignty  when  he  sanctioned  William  the 
Conqueror's  invasion  of  England.  Gregory  went  a 
step  further  :  the  power  which  could  confer  thrones, 
could  also  depose  kings.  He  placed  Henry  IV. 
under  the  ban  of  the  Church,  and  declared  him  to  be 
deprived  of  the  government  of  Germany  and  Italy, 
and  released  his  subjects  from  their  allegiance.  Henry 
soon  found  that  he  was  deserted  and  shunned,  and 
that  his  subjects  were  falling  away  from  him  ;  he  must 
obtain  the  papal  pardon  under  any  terms.  In  the 
depth  of  winter,  and  that  one  of  unusual  severity  even 
in  those  inclement  regions,  he  determined  to  cross  the 
Alps  with  his  wife  and  infant  child,  and  to  throw  him- 
self upon  the  mercy  of  the  pontiff.  The  Pope  at  the 
time  was  at  Canossa,  a  castle  among  the  Apennines. 
Unattended,  dressed  in  the  garb  of.  a  pilgrim,  and 
with  bare  feet,  Henry  was  admitted  within  the  second 
of  the  three  walls  of  the  castle,  and  there  exposed  to 
the  piercing  cold,  he  was  detained  for  three  whole 
days,  after  which  he  was  admitted  into  the  presence 
of  the  Pope. 

But  Gregory  had  gone  too  far  :  the  humiliation  to 
which  he  had  been  subjected  armed  Henry  with  an 
energy  of  which  he  had  seemed  incapable.  Henry 

*  Mansi,  xx.  c.  433. 
P  2 


2  12 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


led  a  large  army  into  Italy,  and  took  possession  of 
the  Leonine  city,  a.d,  1083  ;  the  Pope  sought  refuge  in 
the  castle  of  St.  Angelo ;  a  rival  Pope,  Guibert  of 
Ravenna,  was  formally  enthroned  on  Palm  Sunday, 
A.D.  1084 ;  and  by  him,  on  Easter  Day,  Henry  was 
crowned  to  the  imperial  dignity.  Gregory,  in  his 
emergency,  had  solicited  the  help  of  Robert  Guiscard, 
who  effected  an  entrance  into  the  city,  and  carried  the 
Pope  in  triumph  from  St.  Angelo  to  the  Lateran  ;  but 
for  three  whole  days  the  city  ^v^as  subjected  to  a  siege, 
and  to  quell  the  resistance  of  the  citizens,  Guiscard 
ordered  it  to  be  set  on  fire,  whereby  a  large  part  of 
ancient  Rome  was  reduced  to  a  mass  of  ruins.  But 
to  avoid  the  rage  of  the  citizens,  Gregory  was  obliged 
to  withdraw  first  to  Monte  Casino,  and  ultimately  to 
Salerno,  where,  on  May  25,  1085,  he  died  an  exile, 
apparently  in  a  lost  cause,  but  really  the  conqueror  in 
the  great  battle  which  under  him  had  only  just  begun. 
He  had  found  the  papacy  sunk  in  the  lowest  depth 
of  degradation,  he  left  it  far  advanced  towards  domi- 
nion over  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth  ;  henceforward 
the  relations  between  the  emperor  and  the  Pope  were 
to  be  reversed ;  the  emperor  was  no  longer  to  confirm 
the  election  of  the  Pope,  but  the  Popes  were  to  have 
the  empire  at  their  disposal  ^.  Hildebrand  had  aimed 
at  nothing  short  of  the  complete  subjection,  not  only 
of  bishops  and  councils,  but  of  princes  and  emperors 
to  the  see  of  Rome.  Now  the  Pope  made  no  scruple 
of  calling  himself  a  universal  bishop,  which  Gregory  I. 
had  denounced  as  "blasphemous."  Now  no  longer 
the  emperor,  but  the  Pope  alone  could  convene  coun- 
cils ;  and  the  decrees  of  even  general  councils  were 
not  binding  on  him,  or  on  others,  without  his  sanc- 

Robertson,  ii.  602. 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM. 


213 


tlon ;  he  could  send  at  his  will  his  legates  into  every 
country,  who,  perhaps  only  in  deacon's  orders,  had  full 
authority  over  the  archbishop  of  the  province ;  the 
Pope  was  the  only  bishop,  the  source  of  all  juris- 
diction, he  could  promulgate  new  enactments,  and 
dispense  with  ancient  canons  of  the  Church 

Loftier  pretensions  than  these  could  not  be  made  ; 
yet  it  remained  for  the  Popes,  between  Gregory  VII. 
and  Innocent  III.,  (a.d.  1198,)  to  fill  in  the  outline 
which  Gregory  had  sketched. 

Gregory's  successor,  Victor  III.,  only  held  the  pon- 
tificate for  a  few  months,  and  Urban  II.  followed,  a.d. 
1088,  who,  in  a  council  held  at  Clermont  in  1095,  niade 
that  appeal  which  led  to  the  Crusades,  of  which, 
as  being  the  cause  of  a  further  developement  in  the 
papacy,  we  must  now  give  a  short  account. 

In  638  Jerusalem  had  fallen  into  the  power  of  the 
Mahomedans,  subject  to  whom  Christians  in  the  Holy 
Land,  and  the  pilgrims  who  resorted  to  the  Holy  Place, 
led  generally  a  tolerable  existence,  under  the  Patriarch 
of  Jerusalem.  But  after  1073,  when  the  Turks  who 
had  become  converts  to  Mahomedanism  conquered 
Palestine,  the  condition  of  the  Christians  became  in- 
tolerable. It  was  in  consequence  of  the  sad  report 
brought  by  Peter  the  Hermit  from  Palestine,  that 
Urban  II.,  at  the  Council  of  Clermont,  proclaimed 
the  first  Crusade,  promising  the  pardon  of  their  sins 

^  Of  his  deposition  of  Henry  IV.,  Bossuet  (i.  141)  says  :  "  On  netrouve 
dans  tous  les  si^cles  qui  ont  precedd  Gregory  VII.  aucun  example  d'un 
semblable  sentence."  Yet  we  have  several  instances  under  future  Popes  ; 
Alexander  III.  with  respect  to  Frederic  Barbarossa,  a.d.  1168  ;  Inno- 
cent III.  to  Otto  IV.,  A.D.  1210,  and  King  John  of  England,  1212  ;  Gre- 
gory IX.,  A.D.  1238,  and  Innocent  IV.,  a.d.  1245,  to  Frederic  II. ;  John 
XXII.  to  the  King  of  Bavaria,  a.d.  1333  ;  and  Pius  V.  to  Queen  Elizabeth 
a.d.  1569. 


214 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


to  all  who  should  take  arms  against  the  infidels,  and 
die  in  true  repentance.  The  speech  was  greeted  with 
exclamations  of  "  It  is  the  will  of  God,"  which  hence- 
forward became  the  war-cry  of  the  Crusaders,  whilst 
thousands  immediately  enlisted  by  attaching  a  cross 
to  their  left  shoulder,  the  badge  of  their  profession 
as  Christ's  soldiers.  For  nearly  two  hundred  years 
did  the  eruption  from  Europe  into  Asia  last;  not 
only  kings  and  princes,  but  three  emperors  took  their 
share ;  Crusade  followed  Crusade ;  twice  was  Jerusa- 
lem taken  and  re-taken.  The  first  and  only  success- 
ful Crusade  ended  after  a  siege  of  forty  days,  by  the 
taking  of  Jerusalem  by  Godfrey  de  Bouillon,  a.d. 
1099,  and  the  setting  up  of  a  Latin  kingdom  at  Jeru- 
salem, of  which  Godfrey  himself  was  elected  king  ;  the 
kingdom  however,  which  comprised  little  more  than 
the  city  itself,  the  country  in  general  being  under  the 
Mahomedans,  continued  to  exist  only  about  eighty 
years. 

Another  Crusade,  of  which  St.  Bernard,  Abbot 
of  Clairvaux,  was  the  principal  director  and  animating 
spirit,  having  been  undertaken  in  1147,  on  account 
of  the  great  progress  of  infidelity,  only  ended  in 
a  disastrous  failure. 

Saladin  having  extinguished  the  Latin  kingdom 
of  Jerusalem,  and  again  bringing  the  Holy  Sepulchre 
under  the  power  of  the  infidels,  in  1x89  a  Crusade 
was  undertaken  by  Frederic  Barbarossa,  the  great 
Hohenstaufen,  but  on  his  way  to  the  Holy  Land 
he  was  drowned,  whilst  crossing  a  small  river  in 
Cilicia,  and  his  army  swept  away  by  a  terrible  pes- 
tilence. The  following  year  another  expedition  was 
headed  by  Philip  Augustus  of  France,  and  Richard 
Coeur-de-Lion  of  England ;   Richard   gained  some 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM. 


advantage  over  Saladin,  but  Jerusalem  was  not  re- 
covered, and  the  Mahomedan  power  was  left  es- 
tablished in  Palestine. 

In  1203  another  Crusade,  under  the  French  and 
Venetians,  stopped  short  at  Constantinople,  and  did 
not  even  attempt  the  recovery  of  the  Holy  Land. 
At  Constantinople  they  established  a  Latin  emperor, 
and  not  only  so,  but  they  cruelly  persecuted  the  Greek 
bishops  and  clergy,  whilst  they  set  up  a  schismatical 
Church  with  a  Latin  Patriarch,  Tomaso  Morosini 
as  bishop  subject  to  the  see  of  Rome.  The  Greek 
Patriarchs  maintained  their  succession  at  Nice  in 
Bithynia,  and  it  was  not  till  a.d.  1261  that  they 
recovered  Constantinople,  and  expelled  the  Latin 
usurpers. 

Other  Crusades  followed,  but  no  permanent  good 
was  effected.  Jerusalem  was  for  a  time  recovered, 
but  only  to  fall  again  into  the  hands  of  the  Maho- 
medans ;  and  a.d.  1291  the  city  of  Acre,  where  the 
feeble  relics  of  the  Crusaders,  and  the  titular  King 
and  Patriarch  of  Jerusalem  had  resided,  was  cap- 
tured ;  and  so  ended  the  Christian  power  in  Pa- 
lestine. 

The  Crusades  were  a  lamentable  failure.  But,  per- 
secuted as  the  Eastern  Church  was,  it  might  at  least 
have  been  hoped  that  its  sad  condition  would  have 
excited  the  sympathy  of  the  Pope,  and  the  union 
of  the  Eastern  and  Western  Churches  have  been 
effected.  Instead  of  that  being  the  case,  when  Ger- 
manus.  Patriarch  of  Constantinople,  wrote  to  Pope 
Gregory  IX.,  protesting  that  the  Greeks  were  not 
schismatics,  and  entreating  him  to  be  at  peace  with 
them,  that  Pope,  a.d.  1232,  could  exult  over  the 
downfall  of  the  Greek  Church,  and  taunt  the  patri- 


2l6 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


arch  that  "  calamities  had  come  by  the  just  judg- 
ment of  God  ever  since  they  had  refused  obedience 
to  St.  Peter  and  his  successors,  while  the  Roman 
Church,  the  head  and  mistress  of  all  Churches,  had 
flourished  in  peace'."  So  the  two  Churches  became 
more  estranged  than  ever. 

But  failure  as  the  Crusades  were,  to  Rome  they 
were  of  the  greatest  importance,  and  from  the  first 
the  Pope  understood  the  great  moral  influence  he 
would  gain  by  setting  himself  at  the  head  of  them. 
The  whole  scheme  of  the  Crusades  rested  on  the 
supremacy  of  the  Pope  over  every  part  of  the  Church  ; 
he  could  give  absolution  to  all  who  took  part  in  them, 
from  whatever  part  of  the  world  they  came ;  for  two 
centuries  the  Popes  had  the  power  of  directing  all 
the  armies  of  Europe  against  the  infidels ;  they  could 
exact  enormous  sums  of  money  on  pretence  of  send- 
ing aid  to  the  Crusaders,  or  for  absolving  people  from 
their  vows  :  can  we  wonder  that,  after  they  had  es- 
tablished their  rights  to  create  and  depose  kings, 
to  be  infallible,  and  superior  to  general  councils,  they 
came  to  assert  claims  which  grew,  if  possible,  higher 
as  time  grew  on,  and  became,  as  the  Reformation 
drew  near,  a  burden  both  to  Church  and  State  ? 

It  had  been  the  custom,  first  set  by  Pepin,  for  the 
great  people  of  the  earth  to  lead  the  Pope's  horse  ^ 

'  Hussey,  p.  167. 

■  A  burlesque  of  this  was  performed  at  the  consecration  of  the  hermit, 
Peter  of  Murrone,  who,  a.d.  1294,  was  consecrated  under  the  title  of 
Celestine  V.  The  old  man,  drawn  from  his  narrow  cell  on  the  mountain 
of  Murrone  at  the  age  of  seventy-two,  emaciated  with  fasting  and  the 
austerities  of  his  living,  was  surprised  to  find  himself  elected  to  the  Pon- 
tificate ;  at  his  consecration,  at  which  a  concourse  of  two  hundred  thou- 
sand persons  were  assembled,  the  new  Pope,  with  his  long  white  hair  and 
roughly  dressed,  rode  upon  an  ass,  the  reins  of  which  were  held  on  one 
side  by  the  King  of  Naples,  on  the  other  by  the  titular  King  of  Hungary. 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM.  217 

Conrad,  the  rebellious  son  of  Henry  IV.,  instituted 
the  practice  of  holding  the  Pope's  stirrup ;  this  cus- 
tom the  Popes  in  time  deduced  from  Constantine, 
whom  the  donation'  represented  as  performing  the 
duty  for  Pope  Sylvester.  In  1152,  Frederic  I.,  better 
known  as  Barbarossa,  or  Red  Beard,  second  of  the 
house  of  Hohenstaufen,  succeeded  to  his  uncle,  Conrad 
III.,  as  emperor.  Convinced  as  firmly  as  any  Pope 
of  the  sacredness  of  his  office,  and  that  he  wore  the 
imperial  crown  by  the  grace  of  God,  no  man  was  less 
likely  to  submit  to  papal  encroachments.  On  his  first 
visit  to  Rome  he  found  Hadrian  IV,  (Nicholas  Break- 
speare,  the  only  Englishman  ever  raised  to  that  dig- 
nity) Pope.  He  refused  to  comply  with  the  custom 
of  holding  Hadrian's  stirrup ;  but  when  the  Pope  re- 
fused to  bestow  on  him  the  crown  on  other  terms,  and 
he  heard  that  the  emperor  Lothair  had  done  so,  he 
consented ;  even  then  he  did  it  so  clumsily  as  to  hold 
the  left  instead  of  the  right  stirrup ;  the  Pope  remon- 
strated ;  Barbarossa  excused  himself  by  observing  that 
the  Hohenstaufen  family  had  not  had  much  experi- 
ence in  the  duties  of  a  groom. 

Quarrels  between  Pope  Hadrian  and  the  emperor 
followed,  only  to  be  ended  by  the  death  of  the  Pope  ; 
and  to  break  out  again  for  twenty  years  longer  with 
more  momentous  consequences  under  Alexander  III., 
a  pontiff  who  carried  out  the  Hildebrandine  princi- 
ples in  their  full  vigour". 

'  When  the  Pseudo-Isidore  Decretals  did  not  go  far  enough,  new  his- 
torical supports,  new  laws,  or  new  interpretations  of  old  laws,  were  never 
wanting  to  justify  further  pretensions. 

°  It  was  in  this  pontificate  that  the  quarrels  between  A'Becket  and 
Henry  II.  took  place.  Alexander  convened  on  his  own  authority,  in  the 
same  manner  as  the  emperors  had  done,  the  third  Lateran  Council,  A.D. 
1 1 79,  by  which  it  was  decreed  that  the  Pope  should  be  elected  by  the 
college  of  cardinals  alone,  a  majority  of  two  thirds  being  required  for 
a  valid  election. 


2l8 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


Barbarossa  transferred  his  allegiance  to  an  anti- 
pope,  holding  for  him  his  stirrup,  and  shewing  him 
other  marks  of  reverence.  But  Alexander  not  only- 
had  the  moral  support  of  the  kings  of  France  and 
England,  and  was  aided  by  the  league  of  the  Lom- 
bard cities ;  but  the  half  of  Barbarossa's  army  was 
in  one  week  destroyed  by  a  fever  then  raging  at 
Rome,  so  that  he  was  defeated  at  the  battle  of  Legnano, 
A.D.  1 1 76,  and  was  forced  to  sue  for  peace.  The  two 
powers,  the  emperor  and  the  Pope,  were  induced,  by 
the  mediation  of  the  Doge  Sebastian  Ziani,  to  meet 
on  July  24  at  Venice.  Alexander  and  two  cardinals 
were  sitting  in  the  porch  of  St.  Mark's,  where  three 
slabs  of  red  marble  now  mark  the  spot.  The  em- 
peror, laying  aside  his  outer  robe,  prostrated  himself, 
and  kissed  the  Pope's  feet ;  after  which,  advancing  to 
the  altar,  he  bowed  his  head,  and  received  the  kiss 
of  peace.  The  next  day,  on  the  feast  of  St.  James, 
the  ceremony  of  kissing  the  Pope's  feet  was  repeated, 
and  after  Mass  the  Pope  was  conducted  by  the  em- 
peror to  the  door  of  the  church ;  the  emperor  held 
his  stirrup,  and  was  taking  the  bridle  to  lead  the  horse, 
when  the  Pope  courteously  excused  him  The  mag- 
nitude of  the  victory  to  the  papacy  cannot  be  exag- 
gerated :  it  was  the  abandonment  by  the  mightiest 
prince  of  the  time  of  a  project  on  which  both  em- 
peror and  Pope  had  set  their  hearts.  During  the 
whole  pontificate  of  Alexander,  the  power  of  the 
papacy  increased  ;  the  decrees  of  councils  were  guided 
by  the  dictation  of  the  Pope  or  his  legate ;  by  the 
system  of  appeals,  every  matter  of  importance  was 

^  The  story  of  the  Pope's  placing  his  foot  on  the  emperor's  neck,  whilst 
the  choir  sang  Ps.  xci.  13,  "Thou  shalt  go  upon  the  lion  and  adder,"  was 
a  fabrication  of  the  fourteenth  century. 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM. 


brought  under  his  jurisdiction,  so  that  the  way  was 
paved  for  the  full  development  of  the  papacy  in 
the  time  and  person  of  Innocent  III.  (a.d.  1198 — 
12 16). 

The  thirteenth  century  may  be  considered  as  the 
period  of  Rome's  greatest  height.  Innocent  III.  (Car- 
dinal Lothair)  claimed  the  inherent  supremacy  of  the 
spiritual  over  the  temporal  power,  as  of  the  soul  over 
the  body,  as  of  eternity  over  time,  as  of  Christ  over 
Csesar,  as  of  God  over  man.  Matthew  Paris  indeed, 
accuses  him  of  avarice ;  yet,  says  Milman,  "  his  high 
and  blameless,  and  in  some  respects  wise  and  gentle, 
character,  seems  to  approach  more  nearly  than  any 
one  of  the  whole  succession  of  Roman  pontiffs  to  the 
ideal  light  of  a  supreme  pontiffs." 

Later  pontiffs  were  more  violent  and  more  exor- 
bitant in  their  demands,  but  they  only  endangered 
their  cause,  and  the  repulsive  and  ill-timed  arro- 
gance of  Boniface  VIII.  (a.d.  1294)  undermined  and 
shook  the  papacy  to  its  base.  Cardinal  Lothair  was 
elected  Pope  when  he  was  only  thirty-seven  years 
of  age,  and  in  deacon's  orders.  His  two  greatest 
wishes  were  the  conquest  of  Palestine,  and  the  re- 
formation of  the  Church ;  these  he  believed  could 
only  be  effected  by  the  complete  ascendancy  of  the 
Roman  Church,  and  the  obedience  of  all  nationalities 
to  the  Roman  see.  The  minority  of  the  young 
Frederic  II.''  greatly  favoured  him,  and  the  kings 
of  almost  every  state,  not  only  petty  kings  such  as 
Arragon,  Leon,  and  Portugal,  but  great  potentates 

'  Anno  1215. 

^  Milm.,  Lat.  Christ.,  B.  ix.  c.  i. 
Barbarossa  died  a.d.  1189,  leaving  a  son,  Henry  VI.  ;  who,  dying  in 
1 197,  in  his  thirty-second  year,  left  a  son,  afterwards  Frederic  II.,  only 
■two  years  of  age. 


220 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


also,  were  brought  under  subjection  to  him.  By 
that  fearful  engine,  the  Interdict,  he  could  make 
all  submit  to  his  will.  When  the  Empress  Con- 
stance, widow  of  Henry  V,,  applied  to  him  for  in- 
vestiture of  the  kingdom  of  Sicily  for  herself  and 
her  son  Ferdinand,  he  would  only  grant  it  on  the 
condition  of  the  empress  and  her  son,  when  he  came 
of  age,  doing  homage  for  the  kingdom.  He  claimed 
to  himself  the  right  of  judging  between  the  candi- 
dates for  the  imperial  throne,  and  himself  choosing 
the  emperor.  He  freed  the  subjects  of  Count  Ray- 
mond of  Toulouse,  who  was  tainted  with  the  Albi- 
gensian  heresy,  from  their  allegiance.  He  compelled 
Philip  Augustus,  King  of  France,  to  dismiss  his 
wife,  Agnes  de  Meranie,  whom  he  had  unlawfully 
married,  and  to  take  back  his  lawful  wife,  Inger- 
burga.  How  he  sfibdued  John  of  England  ;  how 
John  resigned  his  crown  and  kingdom  to  the  papal 
commissioner  Pandulph,  and  received  it  back  from 
his  hands  ;  how  he  promised  to  hold  the  kingdom 
of  England  and  Ireland  by  the  payment  of  an  an- 
nual tribute  to  Rome  (although  it  is  true  that  Magna 
Charta  was  passed  against  the  Pope's  will),  we  have 
seen  in  the  last  chapter.  His  views  as  to  the  autho- 
rity of  the  Church,  that  every  heresy  is  an  offence 
not  only  against  the  Church,  but  against  society, 
which  it  was  the  duty  of  rulers  to  suppress  at  any 
cost,  led  him  into  the  Crusade  against  the  Albigen- 
sians ;  and  although  he  cannot  be  held  responsible 
for  its  excesses,  it  is  evident  he  viewed  the  enter- 
prise not  only  as  lawful  but  praiseworthy. 

Magnificent  above  all  was  the  close  of  his  pontifi- 
cate, when  the  fourth  Lateran  Council  (a.d.  12 15)  met 
at  his  bidding  at  Rome ;  that  famous  council,  attended 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM. 


221 


by  the  representatives  of  two  emperors,  by  all  the 
Eastern  patriarchs,  either  in  person  or  by  proxy,  by 
seventy  metropolitans,  more  than  four  hundred  bishops, 
and  eight  hundred  other  prelates ;  all  acknowledging 
him  as  their  head,  and  assembled  to  receive  from  his 
lips  the  law  for  Christendom  ^,  which  for  the  first  time 
engrafted  the  distinctive  features  of  Romanism  on  the 
theology  of  the  Church  ;  first  the  doctrine  of  Transub- 
stantiation,  and  then  the  necessity  for  people  of  both 
sexes  confessing  their  sins  at  least  once  a-year  to  their 
own  parish  priest. 

For  a  time  there  were  not  wanting  Popes  to  maintain 
for  the  papacy  the  high  position  at  which  Innocent 
had  left  it.  Frederic  II.  was  crowned  emperor  by  Ho- 
norius,  and  the  enmity  between  the  Popes  and  the 
Hohenstaufens  soon  broke  out  into  open  hostility, 
which  was  to  last  throughout  the  whole  of  Frederic's 
life.  With  Frederic,  the  cause  of  the  empire  was 
lost ;  and  the  contest  ended  in  the  complete  triumph 
of  the  papacy,  when,  a.d.  1268,  Conradin,  the  last  of 
the  Hohenstaufens,  the  best  and  most  innocent  of  the 
race,  perished  miserably  on  the  scaffold  at  Naples, 
the  victim  of  the  relentless  hostility  of  the  papacy. 
The  Pope  had  conquered  the  greatest  power  in  the 
world. 

Boniface  VIII.  (a.d.  1294)  failing  to  see  the  altered 
circumstances  of  the  times, — a  compact  monarchy  in 
France,  under  Philip  the  Fair,  ready  and  able  to  take 
up  the  quarrel  with  the  papacy,  which  the  emperors 
had  dropt ;  in  England,  under  Edward  I.,  an  impa- 
tience under  papal  exactions,  and  aspirations  after  civil 
and  religious  liberty, — put  forth  the  same  exalted  pre- 
'  Abp.  Trench,  Medijeval  Church,  p.  161. 


222 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


tensions  as  the  ablest  and  most  powerful  of  the  Popes. 
As  Innocent  III.  had  interpreted  "the  greater  light  to 
rule  the  day"  (Gen.  i.  i6)  to  be  a  symbol  of  the  pa- 
pacy, so  now  with  Pope  Boniface  the  "  two  swords  " 
(St.  Luke  xxii.)  meant  the  spiritual  and  temporal  power 
of  the  Pope. 

Philip  of  France,  a  man  as  selfish  and  rapacious  as 
Boniface,  wanted  money,  and  he  determined  to  follow 
the  example  of  the  Popes  in  laying  excessive  taxes 
upon  the  clerg}\  Edward,  King  of  England,  refused 
to  pay  the  unjust  tribute  first  granted  by  his  grand- 
father, John.  Boniface,  in  consequence,  issued,  a.d. 
1296,  the  bull  (called  from  its  two  first  words)  "Clericis 
Laicos,"  which  forbade  the  clergy  paying  taxes  without 
the  consent  of  the  Apostolic  see  ;  whilst,  a.d.  1302,  he 
published  the  famous  bull  "  Unam  sanctam,"  in  which 
it  is  stated,  "  we  declare,  affirm,  define  and  pronounce, 
that  it  is  altogether  necessary  to  salvation,  that  every 
human  creature  should  be  subject  to  the  Roman  Pon- 
tiff." Philip  of  France  was  not  thus  to  be  terrified  ; 
for  now  the  Estates  of  the  realm  had  declared  aorainst 

o 

the  Pope's  claims,  and  by  this  time  papal  excommuni- 
cations had  lost  their  terror.  He  forbade  the  French 
bishops  to  attend  a  council  which  Boniface  summoned 
at  Rome,  and  himself  appealed  to  a  general  council. 
Boniface  had  retired  to  his  native  place,  Anagni,  from 
which  he  had  intended  to  issue  against  Philip  a  bull  of 
deposition  on  Sept.  8,  1303,  but  he  was  frustrated  in 
a  manner  he  little  expected.  In  the  early  days  of  his 
pontificate,  he  had  cruelly  oppressed  the  Colonnas, 
one  of  the  most  powerful  families  in  Rome.  On  the 
7th  September,  a  party  of  the  Colonnas  engaged  in 
the  service  of  Philip,  set  fire  to  the  church  of  Anagni, 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM. 


223 


which  adjoined  the  Pope's  palace  :  Boniface  managed 
with  difificulty,  and  after  having  endured  the  greatest 
privations,  to  escape  to  Rome,  where  he  found  a  re- 
fuge in  the  family  of  the  Orsini,  the  hereditary  enemies 
of  the  Colonnas.  But  his  recent  sufferings  were  too 
much  for  an  old  man  nearly  ninety  years  of  age ;  his 
mind  gave  way,  and  it  was  necessary  to  place  him  under 
restraint.  The  manner  of  his  death  is  uncertain,  and 
terrible  accounts  are  given  of  it :  the  prophecy  of  his 
predecessor,  Celestine  V.,  towards  whom  he  was  guilty 
of  great  treachery,  is  said  to  have  been  fulfilled,  "  He 
entered  like  a  fox,  reigned  like  a  lion,  and  died  like 
I  a  dog."  But  his  end  involved  more  than  his  own  fate. 
He  had  tried  to  stretch  the  papal  prerogative  too  far, 
and  had  failed ;  and  henceforth  the  power  of  the  pa- 
pacy declined.  With  his  humiliation  is  immediately 
connected  the  transfer  of  the  papacy  to  Avignon  ;  from 
that  transfer  sprang  the  great  schism  of  the  West ;  to 
heal  that  schism  were  held  the  three  councils,  and  all 
these  effectually  worked  together  to  bring  about  the 
Reformation. 

It  was  this  Boniface  who,  a.d,  1300,  instituted  the 
Jubilee,  under  the  pretence  that  it  had  always  been 
a  centenary  festival,  although  the  records  were  lost, 
to  the  attendants  at  which  extraordinary  privileges 
were  attached.  To  establish  the  story,  two  very  aged 
men  were  found,  one  of  whom  declared  that  when  he 
was  a  boy,  aged  seven,  he  had  attended  the  last  Jubilee, 
a  hundred  years  before  ;  and  a  Savoyard,  of  respect- 
able position,  gave  a  similar  account  of  himself  At 
this  Jubilee  it  was  said  there  were  200,000  strangers 
in  the  city;  the  wealth  that  it  brought  to  the  papal 
exchequer  was  enormous ;  and  an  eye-witness  stated 
that  he  saw  two  of  thq  clergy  employed  night  and 


224 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH 


day  in  collecting  the  money  which  was  left  in 
St.  Peter's  ^ 

Clement  V.,  the  next  successor  but  one  to  Boniface, 
who  was  elected  in  the  interest  of  France,  inflicted 
a  heavy  blow  on  the  supremacy  of  Rome,  by  removing 
the  papal  chair  to  Avignon,  where,  for  seventy  years 
(1309 — 1377),  a  period  which  Italian  writers  compare 
to  the  Babylonian  captivity,  he  and  six  succeeding 
Popes  resided,  all  of  whom,  with  a  majority  of  the 
cardinals,  were  French.  But  the  rapacity  of  the 
Popes  by  no  means  diminished  ;  on  the  contrary,  as 
it  was  necessary  for  them  to  recruit  their  exhausted 
exchequer,  it  increased.  The  "  mandates "  for  pre- 
ferring a  particular  clerk  to  a  benefice  now  gave 
way  to  wholesale  "  provisions,"  a  method  of  obtain- 
ing, before  they  became  vacant,  the  next  presentation 
to  rich  benefices  by  an  "in  commendam"  tenure  to 
the  Pope  and  his  followers.  John  XXII.  (a.d.  1316) 
reserved  to  himself  all  the  benefices  of  Christendom  ; 
he  imposed  annates,  or  first-fruits  of  one  year's  value, 
on  all  benefices,  and  accumulated  from  England  an 
incredible  sum  of  money.  In  iT)']'],  in  the  pontificate 
of  Gregory  XL,  the  papal  throne,  through  the  influence 
of  Catharine  of  Siena,  was  moved  back  to  Rome.  On 
the  death  of  Gregory,  1378,  followed  the  great  schism 
of  the  West,  which  shook  the  papacy  to  its  centre,  and 
exhibited  the  spectacle  of  two  Popes  excommunica- 
ting each  other,  and  their  followers  ;  so  that  the  whole 
of  Christendom  was  necessarily  under  the  ban  of  ex- 
communication of  one  Pope  or 'the  other.    One  Pope 

•  It  was  pretended  that  the  Jubilee  was  a  centenary  festival.  However, 
now  that  it  was  once  instituted,  it  was  found  a  very  convenient  mode  of 
raising  money  ;  so  Clement  VI.  reduced  the  interval  between  the  Jubilees 
to  fifty.  Urban  VI.  to  thirty,  and  Sextus  IV.  to  twenty-five  years. 


AND  WESTERN  CHRISTENDOM. 


225 


reigned  at  Rome,  having  the  allegiance  of  Italy, 
England,  and  the  northern  kingdoms ;  the  other  at 
Avignon,  with  the  allegiance  of  France,  Spain,  Sicily, 
and  Scotland.  The  schism  continued ;  and  with  a 
view  to  healing  it,  was  assembled  the  Council  of  Pisa, 
A.D.  1409 ;  but  it  only  made  matters  worse,  for  it  set 
up  a  new  Pope,  so  that  now  there  were  three,  instead 
of  two  Popes.  The  Council  of  Constance  was  assem- 
bled^ (a.d.  1414 — 1418)  for  the  same  purpose;  and 
a  new  Pope  was  elected,  who  was  acknowledged  by 
the  whole  of  Europe.  A  third  council,  summoned  to 
Pavia,  but  removed  to  Bale,  a.d.  1437,  made  certain 
reforms,  which  the  Pope,  Eugenius  IV.,  disliking, 
called  a  rival  council  at  Florence ;  but  he  was  sen- 
tenced to  deposition  (although  he  retained  posses- 
sion of  his  see),  and  a  rival  appointed  by  the  Coun- 
cil of  Bale.  But  the  intentions  of  councils  were 
frustrated,  and  all  hope  of  reforming  Christendom  in 
that  manner  was  abandoned.  The  evils  complained 
of  remained  unchanged.  In  case  of  nearly  all  the 
Popes,  the  old  vices  of  the  papacy,  nepotism  and 
licentiousness,  were  conspicuous  ;  the  belief  became 
prevalent  that  the  Popes  were  promoting,  not  the 
cause  of  Christ,  but  of  Satan,  and  preparing  the  way 
of  Antichrist. 

As  the  vices  of  kings  had  built  up  the  power  of  the 
papacy,  so  the  vices  and  arrogance  of  the  Popes  de- 
stroyed a  power  which  otherwise  would  have  been 
invincible.  The  "  Reformation  of  the  Church  in  its 
head  and  members  "  was  demanded  on  all  sides ;  yet 

At  this  Council,  amongst  many  matters  of  refonn,  a  resolution  was 
passed  that  a  Pope  refusing  to  obey  that  or  any  other  council  lawfully 
assembled,  should  be  punished. 

Q 


226 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH. 


whatever  might  be  the  wishes  of  her  people,  Rome 
was  not  likely  to  reform  itself  whilst  so  many  abuses 
were  productive  of  such  great  advantages.  Such 
was  the  state  of  things  when,  a.d,  15 13,  Leo  X.  was 
elected  Pope.  In  order  to  give  an  unbroken  narrative 
of  the  Church  of  Rome,  we  have  somewhat  anticipated 
the  order  of  events ;  we  now  return  to  the  Church  in 
England. 


CHAPTER  II. 


THE  THIRTEENTH  AND  FOURTEENTH  CENTURIES, 
TILL  THE  AGE  OF  WICLIFFE  ^ 

PROM  the  death  of  John,  throughout  the  thirteenth 
and  fourteenth  centuries,  the  history  of  Europe  is 
little  more  than  a  history  of  the  Popes ;  and  as  during 
that  period  the  history  of  our  Church  is  more  or  less 
interlaced  with  that  of  Rome,  it  is  an  almost  unin- 
terrupted series  of  papal  encroachments  and  abuses. 
After  John  had  violated  the  liberties  of  the'  nation, 
the  Popes  considered  themselves  free  to  act  with  Eng- 
land as  they  chose,  and  observed  no  limits  in  their 
exactions ;  and  as  the  English  Church  had  grown 
very  rich,  no  country  in  Europe  was  subjected  to  such 
heavy  taxations,  or  suffered  so  much  from  papal  ava- 
rice. By  this  time  the  "  forged  decretals "  had  done 
their  work ;  and  now  the  exalted  notion  of  papal  au- 
thority, the  idea  that  the  Pope  of  Rome  was  jure  divino 
the  successor  of  St.  Peter,  and  had  jurisdiction  over 
the  whole  of  Christendom ;  that  those  who  were  not 
in  communion  with  him  were  outside  the  pale  of  the 
Catholic  Church,  cut  off  from  all  hope  in  this  world 
and  the  next,  had  become  established  in  England ; 
and  was  a  chain  around  the  neck  of  the  nation,  self- 
imposed  indeed,  but  which  never  ultimately  failed  to 
attain  its  end ;  resistance  might  be,  and  constantly 
was  made,  but  it  was  only  for  a  time ;  demands,  how- 
ever unjust  or  extravagant,  were  sure,  under  threat  of 
excommunication,  to  be  conceded.  Under  the  more 
able  kings  of  England,  Rome  was  kept  somewhat 

•  "  Sasculum  Wiclivianum  "  as  it  was  called. 
Q  2 


2  28    THE  THIRTEENTH  AND  FOURTEENTH  CENTURIES, 


under  control,  whilst  under  the  weaker  monarchs 
abuses  multiplied ;  sometimes  the  Church,  the  king, 
and  the  nation  protested  ;  but  too  often,  as  long  as 
the  Church  only  suffered,  Pope  and  king  found  it  to 
their  interest  to  act  in  concert. 

If  we  add  to  this,  that  Rome  had  now  departed 
widely  in  doctrine  from  the  purity  of  the  early  Church  ; 
that  she  had  set  at  nought  the  discipline  of  antiquity, 
and  had  introduced  new  and  strange  doctrines ;  we 
shall  have  some  idea  of  the  corrupt  state  of  the 
English  Church,  at  the  period  on  which  we  are  en- 
tering. 

John  was  succeeded  by  his  son  Henry  III.,  a  child 
of  only  nine  years  of  age,  and  Pope  Honorius,  through 
his  legate  Gualo,  Cardinal  of  St.  Marcellus,  who 
performed  the  coronation  at  Gloucester,  assumed  as 
his  liege  lord  the  guardianship  of  the  young  king ; 
everywhere  he  speaks  of  himself  as  sovereign  of  Eng- 
land, and  Henry  as  the  vassal  of  Rome. 

John  had  conceded  to  the  chapters  of  cathedrals 
the  right  of  electing  their  own  bishops  ;  this,  however, 
was  of  little  avail,  for  the  Pope  claimed  the  power  of 
annulling  their  election,  thus  virtually  having  the  ap- 
pointment in  his  own  hands. 

On  the  death  of  Archbishop  Langton,  the  chapter  of 
Canterbury  elected  as  his  successor  one  of  their  own 
number,  Walter  of  Hemesham,  and  sent  him  to  Rome 
for  investiture.  But  they  had  overlooked  the  right  of 
the  king  and  of  the  suffragan  bishops  to  be  consulted, 
who  therefore  objected,  and  sent  three  commissioners 
to  Rome  to  dissuade  the  Pope  from  confirming  the 
election.  The  Pope  rejected  Hemesham,  but  insisted 
on  making  the  appointment  himself  The  commission- 
ers were  taken  by  surprise,  but  in  the  end  the  Pope 


TILL  THE  AGE  OF  WICLIFFE. 


229 


had  his  own  way,  for  although  he  sanctioned  the  elec- 
tion of  their  nominee,  Richard  Grant,  Chancellor  of 
Lincoln,  yet  they  had  conceded  a  principle  of  which 
succeeding  Popes  always  availed  themselves. 

On  the  death  of  Grant,  the  king  nominated  Ralph 
Neville,  Bishop  of  Chichester  and  Chancellor  of  Eng- 
land, to  the  primacy  :  the  Pope  annulled  the  election. 
John,  Prior  of  Canterbury,  an  old  man,  was  next  elect- 
ed ;  him  also,  on  account  of  his  age,  the  Pope  rejected. 
The  next  selected  was  John  Blunt,  a  scholar  of  known 
reputation.  On  this  occasion  the  Pope  took  high 
moral  ground ;  Blunt  was  a  pluralist,  and  pluralities 
were  forbidden  by  the  canon  ^ ;  it  was  allowed  that 
the  conge  d'elii^e  should  be  granted  in  England,  but 
it  was  arranged  at  Rome  that  Edmund  Rich,  after- 
wards canonized  as  St.  Edmund,  a  man  of  blameless 
life  and  conversation,  should  be  the  bishop  elect,  and 
the  Pope  sent  in  anticipation  the  pall  to  be  conferred 
on  him  by  the  Bishop  of  London. 

On  his  death,  a  man  of  very  different  character  and 
a  foreigner,  Boniface  of  Savoy,  a  violent  and  worldly- 
minded  man,  but  who  had  the  good  fortune  to  be 
uncle  to  Queen  Eleanor,  was  by  her  influence  elected 
to  the  primacy;  and  the  new  Pope,  Innocent  IV.,  de- 
sirous of  conferring  an  obligation  on  the  king,  wil- 
lingly confirmed  the  election. 

In  the  reign  of  Edward  I.,  on  the  death  of  Boniface, 
the  choice  of  the  monks  fell  on  their  prior,  Adam  de 
Chittenden,  whilst  the  king  nominated  as  archbishop, 
Robert  Burnell,  his  Chancellor,  and  one  of  the  first 

Nevertheless,  in  the  same  reign  (Henry  IIL),  the  Pope  confirmed 
Ethelmar,  the  king's  brother,  to  the  see  of  Winchester,  although  he  was 
under  age,  and  allowed  him  to  hold  other  preferments  "  in  commendam," 
amounting  to  more  than  a  thousand  marks  a-year. 


2  30    THE  THIRTEENTH  AND  FOURTEENTH  CENTURIES, 


statesmen  of  the  day.  Gregory  X.  was  Pope  at  the 
time,  and  mediated  between  the  two,  by  annulling  the 
election  of  both  ;  and,  knowing  the  value  of  the  Men- 
dicant Friars  to  the  papal  see,  he  appointed  Robert 
Kilwardby,  one  of  the  Dominicans  who  had  lately 
obtained  a  settlement  in  England.  To  prevent  the 
proceedings  of  the  Pope  forming  a  precedent,  a  protest 
was  made  that  the  bishops  of  the  Church  of  England 
had  always  been  elected  by  the  chapters  under  a 
conge  d'elire  from  the  king,  who  might  object  to  the 
election,  if  he  thought  proper ;  that,  therefore,  the 
case  of  Kilwardby  was  to  the  prejudice  of  the  king 
and  the  church  of  Canterbury,  and  must  be  considered 
only  as  an  exceptional  favour,  not  to  the  Pope,  but  to 
his  nominee. 

Still  this  did  not  prevent  the  Pope  electing  the  suc- 
cessor of  Kilwardby.  In  1277,  Nicholas  III.  became 
Pope,  and  wishing,  like  his  predecessor,  to  favour  the 
Mendicants,  he  appointed  Kilwardby  to  the  Cardi- 
nalate  ;  and  when  the  archbishop  resigned  the  see  of 
Canterbury  at  Rome^  he  appointed  John  Peckham, 
a  Franciscan  Mendicant,  as  his  successor.  The  Pope, 
to  justify  his  conduct,  had  a  ready  and  plausible  argu- 
ment. If  a  diocesan  died  at  Rome,  the  Popes  had  for 
some  time  asserted  the  right  (and  that  right  was  con- 
firmed by  the  Decretals)  of  appointing  his  successor ; 
the  Pope  argued  that  he  had  by  analogy  the  same 
right  in  the  case  of  a  resignation  at  Rome. 

In  the  reign  of  Edward  II.,  on  the  death  of  Robert 
Winchelsey,  a.d.  13 13,  the  king  having  gone  to  France 
to  attend  the  coronation  of  Louis  X.,  the  chapter  of 
Canterbury  elected  as  archbishop,  Thomas  Cobham ; 

He  took  with  him  to  Rome  a  fortune  of  5,000  marks  ;  and  what  is 
still  worse,  if  it  is  true,  the  register  of  all  his  predecessors  at  Canterbury. 


TILL  THE  AGE  OF  WICLIFFE. 


231 


the  king,  however, — one  of  those  "  who  associated  with 
buffoons,  singers,  actors,  grooms,  labourers,  rowers, 
sailors,  and  other  mechanics,"  and  of  whom  "  it  may- 
become  a  question  whether  for  their  own  good,  and 
for  the  good  of  others,  they  should  not  be  placed 
under  restraint,  and  treated  as  idiots," — insisted  on 
his  right  to  appoint,  and  did  appoint,  Walter  Reynolds, 
the  son  of  a  baker  at  Windsor ;  "of  all  the  primates 
who  have  occupied  the  see  of  Canterbury,  few  have 
been  less  qualified  than  he  to  discharge  the  duties  de- 
volving upon  a  metropolitan  However,  Edward 
applied  to  Pope  Clement  V.  to  annul  the  election 
of  Cobham,  and  to  confirm  Walter  Reynolds,  who, 
amongst  his  other  numerous  appointments,  held  the 
bishopric  of  Worcester ;  and  the  pliant  Pope,  dreading 
the  antipapal  feeling  that  was  arising  in  France,  and 
not  wishing  to  add  to  the  number  of  his  enemies,  de- 
termined to  conciliate  the  king  of  England,  and  so 
annulled  the  choice  of  the  chapter,  and  confirmed  the 
king's  favourite. 

During  the  long  reign  of  Edward  III.  no  less  than 
seven  Archbishops  of  Canterbury  were  appointed, 
Simon  Mepeham,  a.d.  1328;  John  Stratford,  1333; 
Thomas  Bradwardine,  1349;  Simon  Islip  ^  also  1349; 
Simon  Langham,  1366;  William  Whittlesey,  1368; 
Simon  Sudbury,  1375  :  and  although  under  Edward 
several  laws  were  enacted  in  opposition  to  Rome,  yet 
all  these  archbishops  were  appointed  either  by,  or 
through  the  intervention  of,  the  Popes ;  whilst  since 
A.D.  1236,  in  the  pontificate  of  Gregory  IX.,  all  bishops 

■*  Dean  Hook,  iii.  458. 

'  In  the  appointment  of  I  slip,  a  hitherto  unheard-of  power  was  claimed ; 
he  was  appointed  "  per  provisionem  Apostolicam,  spreta  electione  de  eo." 
(Dean  Hook,  iv.  114.) 


232    THE  THIRTEENTH  AND  FOURTEENTH  CENTURIES, 

were  obliged  at  their  consecration  to  take  an  oath  of 
fidehty  to  the  papal  see. 

The  Pope  claimed  the  right  to  appoint  the  bishops 
to  the  English  sees,  as  successor  of  St.  Peter,  and 
spiritual  head  of  all  Christendom.  But  he  had  other 
rights  also.  He  maintained  that  all  kingdoms  of  the 
earth  were  under  his  temporal  jurisdiction ;  he  was 
as  far  above  the  kings  of  the  earth  as  "the  sun  is 
greater  than  the  moon,"  so  that  as  king^  he  could 
impose  taxes  at  his  will.  Pope  Honorius,  a.d.  1225, 
demanded  through  his  legate,  Otho,  two  marks  from 
every  convent  in  the  kingdom ;  and  in  the  following 
year,  two  prebends  in  every  cathedral  :  the  latter  de- 
mand, however,  was  received  only  with  mirth  and 
ridicule.  Next  came  an  order  for  the  payment  of 
a  tithe  on  the  annual  income  of  all  benefices,  first  a 
tenth,  and  afterwards  a  fifth,  for  a  crusade  against  the 
emperor ;  so  that  now  the  English  Church  was  to  be 
taxed,  not  for  a  crusade  against  the  Saracens,  but 
for  a  private  quarrel  of  the  Pope's.  The  bishops  at 
first  objected,  but  afterwards  yielded  to  the  demand. 
In  1240,  Gregory  IX.  issued  a  brief  requiring  no  fewer 
than  three  hundred  of  the  first  vacant  benefices  for 
Italians.  Innocent  IV.  is  said  to  have  drawn  an- 
nually from  England,  for  the  foreigners  who  had  been 
appointed  to  English  benefices,  70,000  marks,  a  sum 
more  than  triple  the  whole  revenue  of  the  crown  ^. 

Nor  did  the  avarice  of  the  Popes  stop  here.  They 
claimed  the  patronage  of  all  sees  vacant  when  the 
incumbent  died  in  Rome,  "  vacantes  in  curia;"  and, 
as  appeals  had  to  be  made  to  Rome,  and  there  were 
always  many  litigants  attending  the  courts  at  Rome, 
the  livings  thus  claimed  were  very  numerous. 

'  Barrow,  vi.  p.  5.  »  Matt.  Paris  (vit.  Hen.  III.) 


TILL  THE  AGE  OF  WICLIFFE. 


By  the  system  of  expedatives,  mandats,  or  provisions 
(which  had  first  begun  under  Hadrian  IV.,  the  only 
Englishman  who  ever  occupied  the  papal  chair),  the 
Popes  first  asked,  and  next  demanded,  before  they  be- 
came vacant,  the  reversion  of  the  presentations  to  liv- 
ings^  into  which  they  thrust  their  favourites;  the  canons 
against  pluralities  were  annulled,  so  that  sometimes 
fifty  or  sixty  benefices  were  held  by  the  same  person, 
who  could  not  speak  English,  who  never  appeared  in 
England,  and  provided  for  his  duty  by  some  under- 
paid and  half-starved  substitute. 

Add  to  these  exactions,  Annates,  or  first-fruits  of 
one  year's  income  on  the  presentation  to  a  benefice, — 
these,  by  constantly  removing  clergymen  from  one 
benefice  to  another,  could  be  made  the  source  of  an 
immense  income ;  money  paid  for  the  pall,  which, 
having  been  at  first  conferred  as  a  mark  of  favour, 
soon  became  a  mark  of  confirmation,  and  ultimately 
the  actual  gift,  of  the  metropolitan  office  ;  Peter-pence, 
or  Rome-scot,  an  annual  tribute  of  a  penny  paid  out 
of  every  family  on  the  feast  of  St.  Peter ;  the  large 
sums  of  money  paid  into  the  papal  exchequer  for 
appeals  to  Rome,  for  the  probate  of  wills,  the  laws 
with  regard  to  marriage  which  the  Pope  alone  had 
power  to  sanction  ;  the  laws  of  Church  dues,  of  tithes, 
and  other  Church  property ;  if  to  these  we  add  the 
fees  paid  for  exemption  from  the  Church's  laws,  for 
indulgencies,  for  pluralities  and  non-residence,  we  may 
form  some  idea  of  the  extent  to  which  papal  extor- 
tions were  carried,  and  of  the  consequent  indignation 
which  they  produced. 

And  yet  even  this  catalogue  does  not  convey  the 

The  system  was  prohibited  under  John  XXIL,  who,  as  mentioned  in 
the  last  chapter,  reserved  to  himself  all  the  bishoprics  of  Christendom. 


234    THE  THIRTEENTH  AND  FOURTEENTH  CENTURIES, 


full  extent  of  the  evil.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that 
for  a  long  period  the  Popes  lived  at  Avignon,  and 
were  Frenchmen  ;  so  that  this  money  was  drained  out 
of  England  to  assist  a  country  which  was  a  rival  of 
England.  For  many  years  past  a  papal  legate  had 
been  established  in  the  country,  whose  duty  it  was  to 
look  after  the  interest  of  the  "  curia "  at  Rome — for 
the  term  "  ecclesia,"  ("  church  ")  was  now  exchanged 
for  that  of  "  curia,"  ("  court,") — to  inform  the  Pope  of 
everything  that  was  being  transacted  in  England,  and 
to  draw  the  uttermost  farthing  from  the  country  ;  whilst 
the  extortions  made  by  the  legates  themselves  on  their 
own  account,  are  a  constant  subject  of  complaint  on 
the  part  of  the  writers  of  that  age. 

But  it  must  not  be  imagined  that  the.  English  people 
ever  willingly  acquiesced  in  their  subjection  to  Rome  ; 
the  whole  history,  from  the  time  of  John  to  the  Refor- 
mation, disproves  this.  At  one  time  a  society  was 
formed,  which  declared  they  would  rather  die  than  be 
plundered  by  the  Romans and  demanded  the  expul- 
sion of  all  foreigners  from  England.  In  1239,  a  clergy- 
man who  had  been  appointed  to  a  living  by  the  patron, 
Sir  Robert  Twinge,  had  been  rejected  by  the  Archbishop 
of  York,  acting  under  the  Pope's  orders.  A  complaint 
made  to  the  Pope  was  on  this  occasion  successful.  In 
1245  the  English  barons  made  a  remonstrance,  at  the 
Council  of  Lyons,  summoned  by  Innocent  IV. ;  but  at 
that  time  Boniface  of  Savoy,  the  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury, who  hated  the  English  as  much  as  the  English 
hated  him,  threw  all  his  influence  on  the  side  of  the 
papacy,  and  therefore  the  grievances  were  unredressed. 
In  the  reign  of  Edward  I.,  monks  and  priests  were  for- 

'  "  Infamia  enim  curiae  Papalis  id  promeruerat,  cujus  foetor  usque  ad 
nubes  fumum  teterrimum  exhalabat." 


TILL  THE  AGE  OF  WICLIFFE. 


bidden  to  send  any  money  to  their  superiors  abroad. 
In  1343,  the  Pope  having  made  a  charge  of  two  thou- 
sand marks  upon  the  next  vacant  benefices,  the  agents 
who  came  to  collect  the  money  were  ordered  by  Ed- 
ward III.  to  quit  the  kingdom,  under  pain  of  impri- 
sonment. 

When,  in  1365,  Pope  Urban  V.  demanded  of  the 
king  the  tribute  of  one  thousand  marks  promised  by 
King  John,  with  the  unpaid  arrears  of  thirty-three 
years,  the  three  Estates  of  the  Realm,  Clergy,  Peers, 
and  Commons,  came  to  the  unanimous  decision  that 
neither  John,  or  any  other  king,  had  power  to  place 
the  realm  under  such  a  thraldom,  without  the  consent 
of  the  nation ;  and  the  king  at  the  same  time,  in  order 
to  shew  his  indignation  at  the  Pope's  rapacity,  pro- 
hibited the  payment  of  Peter-pence. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind,  that  since  the  reign  of 
John  a  momentous  change  had  been  effected  in  the 
constitution  of  the  country.  Until  the  reign  of  Ed- 
ward I.  the  national  council  had  been  merely  an  as- 
sembly of  the  king's  feudal  tenants,  not  a  really  repre- 
sentative assembly.  But  in  1295  Edward  I.  called 
together  a  Parliament,  founded  on  the  same  ideas  as 
our  Parliaments  of  the  present  day,  which  was  to  re- 
present all  the  classes  or  estates  of  the  realm  :  the 
higher  clergy  and  the  barons  sitting  in  person,  and 
members  from  the  lower  clergy,  as  well  as  two  knights 
for  every  shire,  and  two  burghers  for  every  borough, 
being  elected  to  attend  as  representatives  of  the  other 
classes  of  the  people. 

No  sooner  was  the  character  of  the  national  assem- 
bly established,  than  it  began  an  important  series  of 
legislative  enactments,  which  shew  that  long  before  the 
Reformation  it  was  found  necessary  to  secure  the  in- 


236     THE  THIRTEENTH  AND  FOURTEENTH  CENTURIES, 


dependence  of  the  Church  against  the  exactions  of 
Rome. 

Of  those  enactments,  the  most  important  were  the 
"  Statute  of  Provisors,"  and  the  "  Statute  of  Praemu- 
nire." In  1350  Parliament  unanimously  passed  the 
Statute  of  Provisors,  which  enacted  that  "  in  case  the 
Pope  collated  to  any  archbishopric,  bishopric,  dignity, 
or  other  benefice  .  .  .  the  collation  to  such  dignity 
should  escheat  to  the  Crown,  and  the  king  and  his 
heirs  were  to  dispose  of  such  preferments  for  one  turn. 
And  if  any  person  should  procure  Reservations  and 
Provisions  from  the  Pope  .  .  .  that  then  the  said  Pro- 
visors, their  Procurators  and  Notaries,  shall  be  attached 
by  their  body  and  brought  in  to  answer."  This  was 
followed  by  a  more  stringent  act,  which  forbade  causes 
relating  to  Provisions  being  taken  into  the  papal  courts. 
But  when,  notwithstanding  the  Statute  of  Provisors, 
it  was  found  that  papal  interference  iti  the  matter  of 
patronage  was  not  materially  abated,  the  statute  16 
Ric.  II.  c.  5,  which  is  known  as  the  Statute  of  Prae- 
munire, enacted  that  "  whoever  procures  at  Rome, 
or  elsewhere,  any  translations,  processes,  excommuni- 
cations, bulls,  instruments,  or  other  things  which  touch 
the  king,  against  him,  his  crown  and  realm,  and  all 
persons  aiding  and  assisting  therein,  shall  be  put  out 
of  the  king's  protection,  their  lands  and  goods  forfeited 
to  the  king's  use,  and  they  shall  be  attached  by  their 
bodies  to  answer  to  the  king  and  his  council^" 

The  Statute  of  Praemunire,  although  unjustly  turned 
against  them  in  after  time  by  Henry  VIII.,  was  not 
enacted  against  the  clergy,  but  against  the  Pope.  No- 
thing is  clearer  than  that,  in  the  thirteenth  and  four- 
teenth centuries,  the  Church  of  England,  clergy  as 

Blackstone,  Commentaries,  iv,  8. 


TILL  THE  AGE  OF  WICLIFFE. 


well  as  laity,  and  the  higher  clergy  in  particular, 
though  closely  connected  with  and  holding  the  doc- 
trines of  the  Church  of  Rome,  was  anti-papal ;  and 
though  the  Church  and  State  might  sometimes  differ 
as  to  what  papal  requirements  were  lawful  and  what 
not,  yet  all  were  united  in  resisting  any  encroachment 
made  by  the  Pope  on  the  rights,  liberties,  or  persons 
of  the  Church  or  nation 

At  the  same  time,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the 
English  Church  did  hold  the  peculiar  doctrines  of 
Rome,  when  unfortunately  Rome  had  deviated  widely 
from  the  faith  of  the  Primitive  Church.  In  the 
thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  theological  learn- 
ing was  at  a  low  ebb.  "  It  was  the  misfortune  of  the 
doctors  of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries," 
says  the  Abbe  Fleury,  "  to  know  but  little  of  the  writ- 
ings of  the  Fathers,  especially  the  more  ancient,  and 
to  be  deficient  in  the  aids  for  well  understanding 
them."  The  writings  of  the  Fathers,  and  the  decrees 
of  councils  were  little  known,  except  through  the 
medium  of  the  Book  of  Sentences,  or  the  Decretuni 
of  Gratian  :  the  former  of  which  was  the  basis  of 
scholastic  theology,  the  latter  the  text-book  of  the 
canonists,  which,  being  written  by  a  Benedictine  monk 
holding  very  exaggerated  notions  of  papal  authority, 
tended  greatly  to  increase  the  influence  of  the  Popes 
The  theology  of  the  Schoolmen,  which  reached  its  full 
development  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  cen- 
turies, the  object  of  which  was  to  engraft  the  philo- 
sophy of  Aristotle"  on  the  established  Platonism  which 


'  Dean  Hook,  iii.  18.  Palmer,  p.  233. 

°  Aristotle,  through  not  being  sufficiently  understood,  had  not  been  con- 
sidered orthodox  down  to  the  time  of  St.  Bernard,  nor  does  he  seem  to 


238    THE  THIRTEENTH  AND  FOURTEENTH  CENTURIES, 

alone  had  hitherto  been  regarded  as  the  orthodox  phi- 
losophy of  the  Church,  could  not  have  done  much 
towards  dispelling  the  prevalent  ignorance  of  the  time. 
The  dryness  inseparable  from  scholasticism ;  the  lo- 
gical question  with  regard  to  universals,  whether  they 
are  '  narnes '  or  '  sounds '  (flatus  vocis)  as  held  by  the 
Nominalists ;  or  '  objective  realities,'  corresponding  to 
the  '  ideas '  of  Plato,  as  held  by  the  Realists  ;  or,  again, 
something  between  the  two,  '  conceptions  of  the  mind  ;' 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  more  important  matters  of  the- 
ology, must  have  served  rather  to  confuse  than  to  edify. 
But  these  questions  produced  a  marked  effect  on  the 
religious  tenets  of  the  day.  It  is  true  that  philosophy 
was  regarded  only  as  the  handmaid  of  theology — 
"  philosophia  ancilla  theologiae  " — still,  by  the  School- 
men everything  was  questioned  and  disputed  ;  doc- 
trine was  established  not  so  much  by  scripture  and 
the  ancient  Fathers,  and  the  oecumenical  councils,  as 
by  reasoning  and  philosophy ;  and  even  when  any 
authority  beyond  reason  was  looked  for  as  the  ex- 
pounder of  Holy  Writ,  the  Church  was  taken  as 
the  first  authority,  and  the  Bible  made  only  a  part 
of  the  Church's  teaching. 

With  regard  to  the  question  between  the  Nominal- 
ists and  Realists ;  about  the  same  time,  or  a  little  be- 
fore, it  arose  or  rather  revived  (for  it  had  before  been 
raised  in  the  eleventh  century),  the  question  as  to 
the  mode  of  the  Presence  in  the  Holy  Eucharist 
was  brought  into  prominence.  It  turned  on  the 
sense  attached  to  the  words  really  and  truly.  The 
*  real  Presence  of  Christ  as  asserted  in  the  specula- 
tions of  the  Schoolmen  was  that  of  His  abstract  Per- 

have  been  held  in  favour  by  the  Reformers.  Luther  styles  him,  "that 
most  rascally  knave,  Aristotle" — "  sceleratissimus  ille  nebulo,  Aristoteles." 


TILL  THE  AGE  OF  WICLIFFE. 


sonality ;  that  abstract  Substance  which,  truly  ex- 
isting in  Itself,  was  capable  of  communicating  Itself 
to  the  forms  of  bread  and  wine,  and  of  thus  being 
infinitely  multiplied,  without  multiplication  of  Its  own 
essence. 

It  was  at  the  same  time,  and  owing  to  the  same 
mode  of  reasoning,  that  the  peculiar  doctrines  of 
the  Roman  Church  became  developed,  such  as  the 
"  Treasury  of  Grace,"  which  issued  in  the  sale  of 
indulgencies,  and  the  Immaculate  Conception;  and 
although  there  was  at  the  same  time  a  growing 
desire  for  something  better,  both  in  doctrine  and 
practice,  the  Schoolmen  °  were  the  steadfast  opponents 
of  everything  like  improvement ;  there  was  nothing, 
however  corrupt,  if  it  were  part  of  Rome's  teach- 
ing, that  they  were  not  ready  to  defend.  The  denial 
of  the  cup  to  the  laity ;  transubstantiation ;  simony, 
if  practised  by  the  Pope ;  purgatory ;  indulgencies ; 
the  burning  of  heretics ;  matters  like  these  they 
never  questioned,  or,  if  they  did,  it  was  only  to 
establish  them  on  a  firmer  basis  than  before 

This  state  of  things  was  not  altogether  dissimilar 
to  what  we  shall  find  to  have  existed  in  the  eight- 
eenth century ;  but  unfortunately  there  was  lacking 

"  The  principal  Schoolmen  were,  Alexander  of  Hales,  called  the  "  Irre- 
fragable Doctor"  (died  A.D.  1245);  Albert  of  Cologne,  surnamed  the 
Great,  a  Dominican  ;  St.  Bonaventura,  a  Franciscan,  a  man  of  so  sweet 
a  temper  and  pure  life  that  it  was  said,  "  In  fratre  Bonaventura  Adam 
peccasse  non  videtur  :"  greater  than  any  of  these  was  St.  Thomas  Aqui- 
nas, the  "Angelical  Doctor;"  Duns  Scotus,  whom  Hooker  calls  "the 
wittiest  of  the  school  divines,"  an  opinion  in  which  posterity  does  not 
agree,  for  from  him  is  derived  the  word  "  Dunce,"  or  "  Duns-man ;" 
William  Ockham  ;  and  one,  probably  a  superior  genius  to  any  of  them, 
who  from  the  universahty  of  his  gifts  was  called  the  "admirable  Doctor," 
Roger  Bacon. 

p  Abp.  Trench,  Med.  Ch.  Hist.,  p.  267. 


240    THE  THIRTEENTH  AND  FOURTEENTH  CENTURIES, 


in  the  clergy  the  learning  and  the  energy  which 
characterized  the  rulers  of  the  Church  at  the  latter 
period. 

Without  crediting  all  we  read,  we  can  easily  be- 
lieve that  the  state  of  the  clergy  in  the  thirteenth 
and  fourteenth  centuries  was  anything  but  satisfac- 
tory ^  but  when  they  are  accused  of  immorality,  we 
must  remember  what  that  accusation  probably  means. 
The  clergy  at  that  time  were  forbidden  to  marry, 
but  they  did  marry,  and  that  was  ever  afterwards 
thrown  in  their  teeth.  Their  wives  were  concubines, 
and  they  "  concubinary  priests ;"  they  were  looked 
down  upon,  even  as  they  were  in  the  days  of  Eliz- 
abeth, and  were  accused,  as  they  were  by  her,  of 
immorality. 

Almost  all  the  higher  offices  in  the  State  were 
filled  by  clergy ;  they  were  chancellors,  ministers,  re- 
gents, diplomatists,  ambassadors  ;  we  read  of  arch- 
bishops and  bishops  being  engaged  in  wars,  crusades, 
or  other  temporal  occupations ;  hence  there  was  a 
general  non-residence,  to  the  great  injury  of  the  people: 
the  presence  of  the  bishops  in  their  cathedral  cities 
was  rare,  the  visitations  of  their  dioceses  a  ceremony 
of  pomp  and  show,  rather  than  for  the  purpose  of 
instruction.  The  Popes  gave  the  clergy  dispensa- 
tions from  the  laws  of  the  Church,  in  fact  there  was 

1  "  They  were  buried  in  all  the  surfeitings  of  a  worldly  life,  haunted 
taverns  out  of  measure,  and  stirred  up  laymen  to  excess,  idleness,  pro- 
fane swearing,  and  disgraceful  brawls.  They  wasted  their  time  and 
wealth  in  gambling  and  revelry,  went  about  the  streets  roaring  and  out- 
rageous, and  sometimes  had  neither  eye,  nor  tongue,  nor  hand,  nor  foot 
to  help  themselves  for  drunkenness.  In  this  worse  than  pagan  desecra- 
tion of  themselves  they  maintained  their  influence  and  authority  by  an 
impious  prostitution  of  the  power  of  the  keys,  and  extorted  by  the  terrors 
of  spiritual  censures  the  money  and  the  obedience  of  their  congrega- 
tions."—(Le  Bas,  Life  of  Wycliffe.) 


TILL  THE  AGE  OF  WICLIFFE. 


241 


scarcely  any  law  that  was  not  frequently  dispensed 
with ;  the  same  persons  would  often  hold  several  bene- 
fices, nay,  several  bishoprics  together,  dispensations 
of  non-residence  being  granted  them  ;  hence,  amongst 
bishops  and  clergy  alike,  there  was  a  spirit  of  world- 
liness,  and  self-indulgence,  and  a  general  neglect  of 
their  duties.  The  clergy  were,  as  we  have  seen, 
often  foreigners,  ignorant  of  the  English  language  ; 
even  when  they  were  Englishmen,  the  service  was 
said  in  Latin,  which  the  people  did  not  understand 
at  all,  and  the  priests  but  little ;  preaching  had  fallen 
into  disuse,  few  having  the  gift,  and  fewer  still  the 
inclination  to  preach.  "  Babbling  Sir  Johns,"  "  Sir 
John  lack-Latin,"  "simple  Sir  John,"  "mumble- 
matins  :"  such  were  the  familiar  appellations  of  the 
parish  priests;  mass -priests  they  were,  who  could 
read  their  breviaries  and  no  more ;  scarcely  able  to 
say  by  heart  the  Pater  Noster  or  the  Ten  Command- 
ments. 

It  was  the  neglect  and  incompetence  of  the  clergy 
that  gave  rise  to  the  Mendicant  orders,  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  revivals  in  the  whole  history  of 
the  Church.  Long  before  the  Reformation,  the  old 
orders  of  monks  had  fallen  into  disrepute ;  by  the 
thirteenth  century  monachism,  although  in  its  time 
it  had  performed  a  useful  office,  was  regarded  as 
an  effete  institution.  When  we  visit  the  ruins 
of  the  old  monasteries,  and  think  that  the  monks 
must  have  had  a  pleasant  time,  we  do  not  consider 
that  those  sites,  standing  amidst  the  glories  of  na- 
ture, were  once  swampy  marshes  and  barren  moors, 
reclaimed  by  the  sweat  of  their  brow  and  the  labour 
of  their  hands.  The  Benedictine  monks  were  the 
agriculturists  of  Europe ;  the  Cistercians  were  the 

R 


242      THE  THIRTEENTH  AND  FOURTEENTH  CENTURIES, 

growers  of  wool,  at  that  time  the  staple  of  England's 
wealth  ;  to  them  the  country  was  indebted  for  food 
and  clothing,  and  indirectly  for  much  of  its  prospe- 
rity in  trade  and  commerce".  They  were  at  once 
labourers  and  missionaries ;  they  laboured  that  they 
might  have  enough  for  their  own  subsistence,  and 
to  dispense  charity  to  the  poor,  who  came  to  the 
wicket-gate  of  the  monastery  to  receive  their  alms, 
or  gifts  of  bread  and  beer.  Their  life  was  not  one 
of  mere  self-indulgence  and  luxury ;  but  was  spent 
in  fastings  and  mortification,  and  a  perpetual  routine 
of  religious  services.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  how, 
in  early  times,  the  Church  could  have  done  without 
the  monasteries.  Not  only  were  they  places  of  re- 
fuge for  those  who  were  in  trouble,  or  weary  of  the 
world ;  but  they  were  schools  for  the  young,  hospi- 
tals for  the  sick,  asylums  for  the  poor ;  to  them  we 
are  indebted  for  whatever  remnants  of  ancient  litera- 
ture we  possess;  they  were  the  sole  repositories  of 
the  learning  in  the  land,  one  of  the  occupations  of 
the  monks  being  to  chronicle  the  events  of  the  time, 
and  to  copy  the  writings  of  the  Fathers  and  the  Holy 
Scriptures. 

But  in  time  these  monks  became  wealthy,  and  lived 
easy  and  comfortable  lives,  and  were  thus  estranged 
from  the  poor ;  religion  was  neglected,  and  lost  its 
hold  upon  the  people.  Besides  this,  as  the  cities  were 
growing  in  wealth  and  importance,  the  people  were 
gathering  more  and  more  from  the  rural  districts  into 
the  towns ;  the  pauper  population,  as  it  increased  in 
numbers,  increased  also  in  misery ;  at  the  best  of 
times,  the  monasteries,  which  were  built  in  secluded 
places,  far  from  the  busy  haunts  of  men,  could  have 

'  Dean  Hook,  iii.  42. 


TILL  THE  AGE  OF  WICLIFFE. 


effected  but  little  good  under  such  altered  circum- 
stances. Some  revival  was  absolutely  necessary.  It 
was  during  such  dark  times  as  these  that  the  Mendicant 
orders,  or  Preaching  Friars,  first  came  into  England, 
during  the  thirteenth  century.  They  consisted  of 
four  principal  orders, — the  Dominicans  ("  Black  Friars," 
or  "  Preaching  Friars "),  who  came  here  about  a.d. 
1212;  Franciscans  ("Grey  Friars,"  or  "Minorites"), 
A.D.  1224;  Carmelites,  or  ("White  Friars"),  a.d.  1250; 
Augustines,  or  ("Austin  Friars"),  a.d.  1252  :  the  chief 
of  these  being  the  Dominicans,  founded  by  Dominic 
Guzman,  a  Spaniard  of  noble  birth ;  and  the  Fran- 
ciscans, by  Francis,  a  native  of  Assisi. 

The  primary  principle  of  the  older  monks  had  been 
to  fly  from  the  world  :  the  profession  of  the  Mendi- 
cants was  to  go  into  the  world ;  to  have  no  houses  or 
possessions  of  their  own  ;  to  live  in  the  narrowest  cell 
on  the  hardest  fare ;  to  identify  themselves  with  the 
lowest  of  the  people  ;  to  live  on  alms,  and  to  abide  in 
any  house  where  they  were  bidden.  Wherever  there 
was  sin  and  misery,  there  we  find  the  Friar  taking  up 
his  abode  ;  in  the  low  and  swampy  districts  of  large 
towns,  in  the  poorest  and  most  neglected  quarters. 
Near  the  shambles  of  Newgate,  on  a  spot  appro- 
priately called  Stink-lane ;  in  the  parish  of  St.  Ebbe's 
at  Oxford ;  by  the  town-gaol  at  Cambridge ;  by  the 
water-side  at  Norwich ;  everywhere  in  the  poorest 
parts  of  the  cities ;  preaching  in  the  corners  of  the 
streets,  or  in  the  market-places,  in  plain,  homely  lan- 
guage, such  as  the  poorest  could  best  understand ; 
frequenting  hospitals  and  lazar-houses,  where  others 
were  afraid  to  enter;  tending  the  lepers,  and  giving 
them  the  kiss  of  peace.  A  great  revival  at  once  took 
place ;  everywhere  crowds  hung  upon  their  words,  and 

R  2 


244     THE  THIRTEENTH  AND  FOURTEENTH  CENTURIES, 


asked  their  blessing ;  people  gave  up  their  possessions 
to  take  the  vows  of  poverty,  chastity,  and  obedience, 
and  went  forth  and  helped  them  in  their  work.  In 
a  few  years,  they  had  acquired  greater  influence  than 
the  older  orders  had  possessed  after  two  or  three 
hundred  years ;  so  that  shortly  after  the  death  of 
St.  Francis,  his  order  alone  numbered  eight  thou- 
sand houses. 

But  before  long  the  vow  of  poverty  was  evaded. 
They  were  not  allowed  to  possess  property,  but  they 
might  enjoy  the  use  of  it.    This  they  evaded  by  re- 
ceiving donations  and  benefactions  to  any  amount, 
the  property  being  vested  in  their  strong  ally,  the 
Pope,  to  be  applied,  however,  to  their  own  use.  This 
ingenious  distinction  enabled  them  to  beg  with  all  the 
greater  importunity ;  so  that  before  long,  whilst  boast- 
ing of  being  the  poorest,  the  Mendicant  orders  had 
become  the  richest,  in  Christendom.     As  early  as 
A.D.  1259  they  had  erected  magnificent  buildings  ; 
they  were  to  be  found  no  longer  in  the  hovels  of  the 
poor,  but  in  the  halls  of  the  rich  and  the  palaces  of 
kings.     They  found  their  way  to  the  Universities, 
the  Dominicans  taking  the  lead  at  Paris,  the  Francis- 
cans  at   Oxford.      Here  they  established  separate 
houses  for  the  use  of  students  of  their  own  order ; 
their  example  was  soon  followed  by  other  religious 
societies ;  munificent  founders,  obtaining  a  relaxation 
of  the  "  Statute  of  Mortmain     endowed  colleges  and 
halls  for  the  education  of  poor  scholars  ;  so  that  it 

■  Lands  held  by  corporate  bodies  were  said  to  be  held  "en  morte 
main,"  the  tenants  not  being  able  to  perform  the  ordinary  feudal  services. 
In  the  reign  of  Edward  I.,  there  being  reason  to  fear  that  men  would  be 
wanting  for  the  purposes  of  husbandry  or  the  army,  the  government 
passed,  in  1279,  the  Statute  of  Mortmain,  to  prevent  the  multipHcation 
of  religious  houses. 


i 


TILL  THE  AGE  OF  WICLIFFE. 


is  to  the  Friars  we  are  indebted  for  the  origin  of 
colleges  at  our  Universities 

St.  Francis  had  contemned  all  learning,  except  just 
enough  for  the  purpose  of  reading  the  Bible ;  but  now 
his  followers  cultivated  learning,  collected  libraries  at 
any  price  (for  money  was  always  forthcoming),  and 
filled  the  Professors'  chairs  at  the  Universities.  Many 
Friars  were  eminent  as  scholars,  or  divines.  Roger 
Bacon,  a.d.  1284,  was  the  first  adventurer  in  experi- 
mental science,  for  which  he  was  imprisoned  as  a  ma- 
gician. St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  the  most  renowned 
amongst  the  Schoolmen,  was  a  Dominican ;  whilst 
the  Franciscans  could  boast  Alexander  of  Hales,  Bo- 
naventura,  and  Duns  Scotus.  They  soon  became  the 
most  influential  body  in  the  country.  "  What  the 
Jesuits  were  after  Luther  began  the  Reformation," 
says  Mosheim,  "  that  the  Dominicans  and  Franciscans 
were  for  the  thirteenth  century,  till  the  time  of  Luther. 
For  that  period  they  had  the  direction  of  nearly  every- 
thing in  Church  and  State;  they  held  the  highest 
offices,  ecclesiastical  and  civil ;  taught  with  almost 
absolute  authority  in  all  the  schools  and  churches, 
and  defended  the  authority  of  the  Roman  pontiff 
against  kings,  bishops,  and  heretics  ^ 

The  Friars,  and  especially  the  Franciscans,  basked 
in  the  special  favour  of  the  Pope ;  and  through  them, 
in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries,  the  Romish 
Church  received  an  addition  of  some  important  doc- 
trines. St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  in  the  thirteenth  century, 
held  "  that  there  is  an  immense  treasury  of  good  works 

'  The  celebrated  College  of  Sorbonne  was  founded  by  Robert  de 
Sorbonne,  a.d.  1251,  for  the  secular  clergy,  and  is  believed  to  be  the 
first  instance  in  Europe  where  seculars  lived  and  taught  in  a  community. 

"  Mosheim,  c.  xiii.  p.  ii.  ch.  ii. 


246     THE  THIRTEENTH  AND  FOURTEENTH  CENTURIES, 


performed  by  holy  men,  over  and  above  what  duty 
requires ;  and  that  the  Roman  pontiff  is  the  keeper 
and  distributor  of  this  treasure,  and  able,  out  of  the 
inexhaustible  fund,  to  transfer  to  every  one  such  an 
amount  of  good  works  as  his  necessities  require,  or 
as  will  suffice  to  avert  the  punishment  of  his  sins." 
The  next  step  was  the  sale  of  these  indulgences, 
a  fruitful  addition  to  the  papal  treasury. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  the 
Blessed  Virgin,  which  was  not  raised  into  an  article 
of  faith  necessary  for  salvation  till  the  pontificate  of 
Pius  IX.,  made  great  advances  under  the  Friars  in  the 
thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries.  The  idea  of  her 
being  a  mediatrix  for  those  who  feared  to  approach 
the  Saviour  immediately,  was  inculcated  even  by 
St,  Bernard.  She  was  long  styled  the  Queen  of  Hea- 
ven, and  it  was  assumed  that  she  was  without  sin. 
It  was  held  by  St.  Anselm  and  others  that  she  was 
conceived  in  sin,  but  sanctified  either  before  or  after 
her  birth  by  the  special  operation  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 
A  festival  was  instituted  to  her  immaculate  concep- 
tion ;  but  this  did  not  originally  relate  to  her  own 
conception  in  her  mother's  womb,  but  to  her  having 
herself  conceived  the  Saviour  of  the  world.  This 
dogma,  which  was  opposed  by  St.  Bernard,  became 
in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  a  subject  of 
strong  controversy  between  the  Franciscans  and  Do- 
minicans, the  former  believing,  the  latter  denying,  the 
immaculate  conception ;  but  even  those  who  rejected 
it,  helped  on  the  dogma  by  their  extravagant  lan- 
guage, which,  whilst  it  attributed  Dulia  to  saints, 
Latria  to  the  Divine  nature,  and  Hyperdulia  to  the 
human  nature,  of  our  Lord,  afterwards  transferred 
Hyperdulia  from  the  Son  to  the  Mother.    St.  Dominic 


TILL  THE  AGE  OF  WICLIFFE. 


247 


promoted  ^  a  devotion  in  honour  of  the  Blessed  Virgin. 
People  were  taught  to  repeat  the  Ave  Maria  one 
hundred  and  fifty  times,  and  the  Lord's  Prayer  fifteen 
times,  once  after  each  decad  of  Aves.  The  prayers 
were  reckoned  by  beads,  and  the  whole  service  ob- 
tained the  name  of  Rosary.  The  excess  of  reverence 
amongst  the  Friars  for  the  Virgin  found  expansion  in 
a  multitude  of  hymns ;  amongst  these  may  be  men- 
tioned the  "  Dies  Irae,"  probably  the  work  of  Celano, 
a  Franciscan,  and  biographer  of  St.  Francis ;  and  the 
"  Stabat  mater,"  which  has  been  ascribed  to  Inno- 
cent III.,  but  is  generally  supposed  to  be  the  com- 
position of  another  Franciscan,  Jacopone  of  Todi^ 

The  Popes,  appreciating  the  zeal  of  the  Friars,  and 
desirous  of  lowering  the  authority  of  the  bishops,  to 
the  subversion  of  all  discipline,  exempted  their  houses 
from  episcopal  jurisdiction,  and  gave  them  leave  to 
preach  in  the  churches,  to  administer  the  sacraments, 
and  to  bury  the  dead,  without  permission  of  the  in- 
cumbents of  parishes,  or  licence  from  the  bishops. 
If  the  parish  priest  refused  absolution,  it  could  easily 
be  obtained  from  the  Friars  ^' ;  if  the  Friar  was  refused 
the  churches,  he  would  erect  his  ambulatory  pulpit  at 
some  cross,  from  which  he  would  rail  at  the  sloth  and 
ignorance  of  the  parish  priest,  and  inveigh  against  the 
secular  clergy,  whom  he  styled  "  dumb  dogs,"  and 
"  cursed  hirelings." 

Thus  the  Mendicants,  the  militia  of  the  Pope,  be- 
came under  his  patronage  the  dissenters  of  the  day, 
and  a  nuisance  to  society.     Instead  of  begging  for 

"  He  did  not  invent  it,  because  it  was  in  use  A.D.  1 100,  and  is  ascribed 
to  various  people, — St.  Benedict,  the  Venerable  Bede,  and  Peter  the 
Hermit.  y  Rob.  iii.  16. 

'  "  Full  swetely  heard  he  confession, 

And  pleasant  was  his  absolution." — (Chaucer.) 


248     THE  THIRTEENTH  AND  FOURTEENTH  CENTURIES. 

alms,  they  would  intrude  themselves,  uninvited,  into 
houses,  and  after  eating  and  drinking  as  much  as  they 
were  able,  we  are  told  by  Richard  Fitzralph,  Arch- 
bishop of  Armagh  in  the  fourteenth  century,  that,  "  not 
content  with  that,  they  would  carry  away  with  them 
either  wheat,  or  meal,  or  bread,  or  flesh,  or  cheeses,  al- 
though there  were  only  two  in  the  house  ; "  they  would 
force  themselves  into  the  parsonage,  where  they  were 
regarded  as  snakes  in  the  grass.  If  they  saw  a  fowl 
or  a  bottle  on  the  table,  they  would  betray  their  host's 
hospitality  by  denouncing  him  as  a  gluttonous  man, 
and  a  wine-bibber.  By  the  time  of  Erasmus '  and 
Luther,  they  were  the  butt  of  every  tavern ;  "  they 
were  exhibited  in  pot-house  pictures  as  foxes  preach- 
ing, with  the  neck  of  a  stolen  goose  peeping  out  of 
the  hood  behind ;  as  wolves  giving  absolution,  with 
a  sheep  muffled  up  in  their  cloaks ;  as  apes  sitting 
by  a  sick  man's  bed,  with  a  crucifix  in  one  hand,  and 
with  the  other  in  the  sufferer's  fob  ^" 

Notwithstanding,  they  were  the  Pope's  right-hand 
men.  This  will  explain,  when  we  come  to  the  Re- 
formation, which,  under  Henry,  was  a  contest  between 
him  and  the  Pope  for  supremacy,  why  the  smaller 
monasteries  were  destroyed  first.  The  reason  as- 
signed was  that  they  were  the  most  corrupt ;  a  truer 
reason  may  be  found  in  the  fact  that  the  smaller 
monasteries  were  the  abodes  of  the  Friars,  the  Pope's 
staunchest  allies,  and,  therefore,  the  king's  strongest 
enemies. 

*  Erasmus  says  that  the  world  was  groaning  under  their  tyranny: 
"Tyrannide  fratrem  mendicantium,  qui  cum  sint  satellites  sedis  Ro- 
manse,  tamen  eo  potentias  ac  multitudinis  evadunt,  ut  ipsi  Romano  pon- 
tifici  atque  ipsis  adeo  regibus  sint  formidabiles." 
Prof.  Blunt,  p.  44. 


CHAPTER  III. 


PRE-REFORMATION  REFORMERS. 

'PHE  removal  of  the  papacy  to  Avignon  was  fatal 
to  the  independence  of  the  Roman  Church ;  the 
great  schism  of  the  West  was  fatal  to  its  unity.  For 
seventy  years,  as  has  been  already  related,  the  Popes 
were  mere  puppets  of  the  kings  of  France  ;  for  fifty 
years  afterwards  the  Christian  world  was  scandalized 
by  two  rival  Popes,  the  one  dwelling  at  Avignon,  the 
other  at  Rome ;  and  sometimes  even  three  Popes  at 
a  time,  each  pretending  to  be  Christ's  Vicar,  each  as- 
sailing the  other  and  his  adherents  with  plots  and  ex- 
communications. "  The  calamities  of  those  times," 
says  Mosheim^,  "were  indescribable.  For,  besides 
the  wars  and  contentions  between  the  political  fac- 
tions, nearly  all  sense  of  religion  was  in  many  places 
extinguished,  and  wickedness  acquired  greater  bold- 
ness and  impunity ;  whilst  the  vicegerents  of  Christ 
were  at  open  war  with  each  other,  the  clergy  laid 
aside  all  appearance  of  religion ;  whilst  conscientious 
people,  who  had  believed  that  no  one  could  be  saved 
without  subjection  to  Christ's  Vicar,  were  thrown  into 
the  greatest  perplexity  and  confusion."  A  firm  re- 
sistance had,  as  we  have  seen,  been  made  by  the  legis- 
lature in  England  to  the  exactions  of  the  Pope ;  now, 
not  unnaturally,  a  doubt  arose  as  to  his  dominion  over 
the  souls  of  men. 

The  national  spirit,  which  had  been  stimulated  by 
the  victories  of  Crecy  and  Poitiers,  felt  an  instinctive 
opposition  to  the  Popes  who  were  living  in  France, 

*  Cent.  iv.  part  ii.  ch.  ii. 


250 


THE  AXGLO-ROMAN  CHURCH. 


the  subjects  of  their  enemy.  Moreover,  there  had 
been  of  late  a  wider  diffusion  of  learning  and  religion 
throughout  the  world.  We  have  seen  that  the  monks 
had  founded  colleges  at  the  Universities ;  learning 
had  begun  to  flourish  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  and 
was  no  longer  confined  to  the  higher  clergy ;  the  in- 
creasing wealth  of  the  trading  and  manufacturing  towns 
added  influence  to  the  middle  classes ;  and  a  desire 
arose  on  the  part  of  the  laity  that  the  high  offices  of 
State  should  be  held  by  them,  instead  of,  as  hitherto, 
by  the  clergy.  This  intellectual  revival  led  people  to 
enquire  for  themselves,  and  to  understand  the  existing 
abuses  of  the  Church  ;  to  desire  a  limitation  of  the 
power  of  the  Popes,  and  a  greater  decency  in  the  lives 
of  the  clergy.  Matthew  Paris,  himself  a  strong  ad- 
herent of  the  Pope,  had  strongly  attacked  the  abuses 
of  the  Church,  and  insisted  on  a  revival  of  religion. 

The  necessity  of  a  Reformation  of  some  kind  or 
other  was  becoming  daily  more  apparent,  the  question 
was  as  to  the  best  means  to  effect  it  ?  was  it  to  be 
done  through  a  general  council,  or  by  the  Pope  was 
it  to  regard  the  external  administration  of  the  Church, 
which  most  people  allowed  to  be  faulty,  or  to  extend 
to  doctrine,  of  which  only  a  few  complained  ? 

It  was  not,  at  first,  against  the  doctrines,  but  the 
discipline  of  the  Church,  more  especially  with  regard 
to  the  Friars,  that  Wicliffe  arose  as  a  Reformer  about 
the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century.  Others  before 
him  had  boldly  taken  their  stand  against  the  abuses 
of  the  Church,  a  few  of  whom  we  ought  here  to 
mention. 

Edmund  Rich,  elected  Archbishop  of  Canterbury 
in  1234,  even  before  his  election  was  confirmed,  con- 
vened a  council   at  Westminster,  and  presented  a 


PRE-REFORMATION  REFORMERS. 


Strong  petition  to  the  king,  Henry  III.,  in  which  he 
and  the  suffragan  bishops  complained  that  England 
had  been  disgraced  by  being  made  tributary  to  the 
Roman  pontiff,  and  exhorting  the  king  to  dismiss  his 
foreign  ministers,  and  to  call  native  subjects  to  his 
council.  The  petition  concluded  :  "If  within  a  very 
short  time  you  do  not  redress  these  grievances,  we 
solemnly  warn  you  that  against  you,  as  against  all 
who  shall  run  counter  to  what  has  now  been  said,  we 
shall  put  in  force  the  censures  of  the  Church ;  a  mea- 
sure which  is  only  delayed  until  the  consecration  of 
our  venerable  father,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury*^." 
Henry  was  alarmed  :  the  foreigners  were  banished ; 
English  prelates  were  appointed  in  their  stead  ;  at  the 
same  time  the  king  secretly  applied  to  the  Pope  to 
send  a  legate  into  the  country,  and  thus  virtually  su- 
persede the  archbishop.  The  end  will  be  best  told  in 
the  words  of  Collier  ° :  "  The  ill-usage  put  upon  him  " 
(the  archbishop)  "by  the  legate,  made  him  quit  the 
kingdom,  and  retire  into  France.  And  here  by  grief, 
excess  of  abstinence,  and  other  austerities,  he  wore 
out  his  constitution  in  a  little  time.  The  encroach- 
ments of  the  court  of  Rome,  'twas  thought,  sat  heaviest 
on  his  spirits,  and  shortened  his  life."  He  was  after- 
wards canonized  as  St.  Edmund  of  Pontigny,  "  at 
whose  shrine  the  devout  were  seen  to  kneel,  until, 
at  the  period  of  the  French  Revolution,  the  shrine 
was  demolished,  and  the  bones  of  St.  Edmund  cast 
abroad  r 

Robert  Grostete,  or  Greathead%  another  of  these 

Wendover,  iv.  292.       =  Vol.  i.  446  (fol.  Edit.)         Hook,  iii.  226. 
'  "Seu  Capito  dictus,"  says  Cave.    Fuller  says  he  received  his  sur- 
name from  the  greatness  of  his  head,  "  having  large  stowage  to  receive, 
and  store  of  brains  to  fill  it."    Matt.  Paris  describes  him  as  :  "  Domini 


252 


THE  ANGLO-ROMAN  CHURCH. 


reformers,  a  man  remarkable  for  sanctity  of  life  and 
strictness  of  discipline,  was  born  in  London  about 
A.D.  1 1 75,  and  was  appointed  to  the  see  of  Lincoln 
A.D.  1235.  He  was  at  first  the  friend  and  patron  of 
the  monks,  but  when  these  received  the  tithes  and 
paid  a  half-starved  vicar  to  perform  the  Sunday  duty 
for  them,  he  determined  to  set  about  the  reform  not 
only  of  the  monasteries  and  of  his  own  diocese,  but 
of  the  Church  at  large ;  and  on  account  of  the  ex- 
emption granted  by  the  Pope  to  the  monasteries,  he 
sought  the  Pope  out,  and  upbraided  him  to  his  face. 
"Be  content,"  said  Pope  Innocent,  "you  have  de- 
livered your  own  soul  by  your  protest,  but  if  I  please 
to  shew  grace  to  these  persons  what  is  that  to  you  ?" 
When  Pope  Innocent  IV.  demanded,  through  two 
Franciscans,  a  tax  of  six  thousand  marks  from  the 
diocese  of  Lincoln,  Bishop  Grostete  refused  to  give 
them ;  and  when  he  appointed  his  nephew,  Frederic 
di  Livania,  a  young  child,  to  a  canonry  at  Lincoln, 
he  disallowed  the  appointment ;  and  the  Pope,  acting 
on  the  advice  of  his  cardinals,  thought  it  wise  to  yield 
to  a  man  so  popular  both  in  France  and  England. 
On  hearing  of  his  death,  the  Pope  exclaimed  :  "I  re- 
joice, and  let  every  true  son  of  the  Roman  Church 
rejoice  with  me,  now  that  my  great  enemy  is  re- 
moved ;"  and  he  ordered  a  letter  to  be  written,  which, 
however,  the  cardinals  refused  to  allow,  to  Henry, 
ordering  the  bishop  to  be  exhumed,  and  to  be  cast 
out  of  the  church  and  burnt. 

Sewell,  Archbishop  of  York  a.d,  1256,  a  friend  of 

Papae  et  regis  redargutor  manifestis,  praelatorum  correptor,  presbyterorum 
director,  Clericorum  instructor,  scholarium  sustentator,  populi  prjedicator, 
incontinentium  persecutor,  scripturarum  sedulus  persecutator,  Romanonim 
malleus  et  contemptor." 


PRE-REFORMATION  REFORMERS. 


St.  Edmund  and  Bishop  Grost^te,  when  Alexander  IV. 
appointed  Giordano,  an  Italian,  who  could  not  speak 
English,  to  the  deanery  of  York  ;  and  again,  when  he 
appointed  some  Italians  to  benefices  in  his  diocese, 
refused  to  institute  them  ;  whereupon  the  Pope  ex- 
communicated him,  and  under  that  sentence  he  died. 

Other  men  of  the  same  stamp  were  Bradwardine, 
chaplain  to  Edward  III.,  for  a  few  weeks  only,  a.d. 
1349,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury;  Thursby,  Arch- 
bishop of  York  A.D.  1360,  who  promoted  the  read- 
ing of  the  Holy  Scriptures  in  English  ;  and  Fitz- 
ralph.  Archbishop  of  Armagh  a.d.  1347,  who  ex- 
posed before  the  Pope  the  evil  practices  of  the 
Friars,  and  is  said  to  have  translated  the  Bible  into 
the  Irish  language. 

The  unknown  author  of"  Piers  Ploughman's  Vision," 
a  work  of  the  fourteenth  century,  exposes,  in  severe 
terms,  the  corruptions  of  the  Church,  and  the  sectarian 
spirit  of  the  clergy.  He  complains  of  men  having 
taken  away  the  honour  due  to  God ;  of  the  worldly- 
mindedness  of  the  priests,  of  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy  ; 
he  asserts  that  the  Pope  is  Antichrist,  and  has  no 
power  over  purgatory.  He  represents  himself  as  in 
search  of  a  creed,  but  the  sectarianism  of  the  clergy 
baffled  him  ;  the  Dominicans  told  him  not  to  be  a 
Franciscan,  the  Franciscans  not  to  be  a  Dominican, 
and  so  on  with  the  other  orders.  He  could  get 
nothing  out  of  any  of  them  but  a  negative  answer,  till 
he  applied  to  a  poor  ploughman,  who  in  every  respect 
differed  from  the  Friars,  for  he  represented  the  "  Di- 
vine Wisdom." 

But  a  greater  far  than  any  of  these  was  John 
Wicliffe,  who  was  the  forerunner,  if  not  the  actual 
author,  of  the  Reformation. 


THE   ANGLO-ROMAN  CHURCH. 


Wicliffe,  who  was  a  great  admirer  of  Bishop  Gros- 
t^te,  as  well  as  Archbishop  Fitz-Ralph,  to  whom  he 
often  refers  in  his  writings,  was  born  at  a  village  of 
the  same  name  as  himself  in  Yorkshire,  a.d.  1324, 
and  appears  to  have  been  educated  at  Queen's  and 
Merton  Colleges,  Oxford ;  he  ranked  high  as  a  school- 
man, and  still  more  as  a  divine,  drawing  his  the- 
ology from  the  Bible,  a  peculiarity  at  that  time  which 
gained  for  him  the  title  of  "  Evangelical,"  or  Gospel 
Doctor. 

We  first  find  him  brought  into  prominence  in  1360, 
as  the  champion  of  the  University  against  the  Mendi- 
cants, who  had  rendered  themselves  obnoxious,  through 
their  attempts  to  get  all  the  teaching  of  the  University 
into  their  own  hands,  and  to  draw  off  students  into 
their  own  monasteries. 

When,  in  1365,  Pope  Urban  V.  demanded  the 
tribute  promised  by  King  John,  the  pen  of  Wicliffe 
added  its  weight  to  the  unanimous  decision  of  the 
Church  and  nation,  that  the  act  of  John,  without  the 
concurrence  of  the  national  assembly,  was  illegal. 

In  1372  he  took  his  doctor's  degree,  which  at  that 
time  involved  the  duty  of  delivering  divinity  lectures 
at  the  University.  Two  years  afterwards  King  Ed- 
ward III.  issued  a  commission,  of  which  John  of  Gaunt, 
Duke  of  Lancaster,  was  head,  to  proceed  to  Bruges, 
for  the  purpose  of  conferring  with  the  Papal  Nuncios 
with  regard  to  the  number  and  value  of  English  bene- 
fices held  by  foreigners,  and  Wicliffe  was  appointed 
second  on  the  commission.  He  remained  at  Bruges 
two  years,  and  on  his  return  he  was  presented  by  the 
king  to  the  prebend  of  Aust,  in  the  collegiate  church  of 
Westbury,  and  afterwards  to  the  rectory  of  Lutter- 
worth, which  henceforth  became  his  home.  Whilst 


PRE-REFORMATION  REFORMERS. 


at  Bruges,  he  obtained  such  an  insight  into  papal  cor- 
ruption, and  inveighed  with  such  earnestness  against 
the  evils  of  the  papacy  ^  and  its  allies,  the  Mendicants, 
that,  A.D.  1377,  Gregory  XI.  issued  from  Avignon 
three  bulls  addressed  to  Sudbury,  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury, and  Courtney,  Bishop  of  London,  complaining 
of  the  remissness  of  the  bishops  and  the  University  of 
Oxford  in  extirpating  heresy,  and  ordering  the  prose- 
cution of  Wicliffe.  Wicliffe,  attended  by  John  of  Gaunt, 
and  Earl  Percy,  the  Earl-Marshal  of  England,  ap- 
peared before  the  commission  in  St.  Paul's  on  19  Feb- 
ruary, 1377.  The  intemperate  conduct  of  John  of 
Gaunt,  a  man  of  ungovernable  temper,  whose  friend- 
ship for  Wicliffe  arose  rather  from  his  hatred  of  Court- 
ney and  the  bishops,  than  any  love  to  the  Church,  and 
who  threatened  to  drag  Courtney  out  of  the  cathedral 
by  the  hair  of  his  head,  brought  on  Wicliffe  a  moral 
defeat,  and  he  was  dismissed  with  a  significant  hint 
not  again  to  mix  himself  up  in  party  politics.  The 
following  year  he  was  summoned  before  a  council  at 
Lambeth,  to  which  he  submitted  a  declaration  of  his 
faith  in  eighteen  articles.  On  this  occasion,  the  sym- 
pathy of  the  mob  was  enlisted  in  his  favour,  and 
alarmed  the  bishops ;  whilst  a  message  from  the  Prin- 
cess of  Wales,  the  mother  of  the  young  king,  led  them 
to  stop  the  proceedings,  and  dismiss  Wicliffe  with  an 
admonition. 

But  the  trouble  and  anxiety  which  he  had  endured 
brought  Wicliffe  to  death's  door  from  a  fever  at  Ox- 
ford. His  old  enemies,  the  Friars,  with  the  aldermen 
of  the  city,  sought  him  out,  and  bade  him  prepare  for 
death,  which  his  treatment  of  them  had  brought  upon 

'  His  language  with  regard  to  the  Pope  was  strong;  he  calls  him  "  the 
proud,  worldly  priest  of  Rome,"  "  the  most  cursed  of  clippers  and  purse- 
curvers,"  i.e.  purse-cutters. 


256 


THE  ANGLO-ROMAN  CHURCH, 


him.  Wicliffe,  ordering  himself  to  be  raised  on  his 
pillow,  exclaimed,  "  I  shall  not  die,  but  live,  and  de- 
clare the  evil  deeds  of  the  Friars."  And  he  did  live ; 
and  his  language  became  bolder  and  stronger.  The 
great  schism  of  the  West  had  broken  out  that  year, 
of  which  Wicliffe  declared  that  Christ  had  "  cloven 
the  head  of  Antichrist." 

The  next  year  he  proceeded  further,  and  attacked 
the  doctrines  of  Rome.  He  declared  Transubstan- 
tiation  not  to  be  founded  on  Scripture,  and  pro- 
fessed the  doctrine  of  Berenger  to  be  the  original 
doctrine  of  the  Roman  Church  ^  ;  he  asserted  his  belief 
in  a  Real,  although  not  a  carnal  Presence,  and  ex- 
pressly disallowed  the  doctrine  that  the  Eucharist  is 
in  no  wise  Christ's  Body\ 

But  now  that  he  had  advanced  to  the  attack  of  doc- 
trine, he  stood  alone,  his  friends,  and  amongst  them 
John  of  Gaunt,  refusing  to  take  part  with  him  any 
longer,  and  the  latter  urged  him  to  be  silent ;  whilst 
the  insurrection  of  Wat  Tyler  and  Jack  Straw,  which 
occurred  at  the  time,  in  which  Sudbury,  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  was  murdered,  although  it  had 
certainly  nothing  to  do  with  the  teaching  of  Wicliffe 
and  the  Lollards,  was  imputed  to  him,  and  prejudiced 
his  cause. 

His  old  enemy,  Courtney,  now  became  archbishop  • 
and  in  a  Convocation  held  under  him  at  Oxford,  Wic- 
liffe's  opinions  were  condemned,  and  he  himself  for- 
bidden to  teach  in  the  University.  He  thought  it, 
therefore,  prudent  to  retire  to  Lutterworth,  where  he 
ended  his  simple  but  eventful  life.    He  was  probably 

8  "  Olim  fuit  fides  Ecclesiae  Romanae  in  professione  Berengarii,  quod 
Panis  et  Vinum  quas  remanent  post  benedictionem,  sunt  hostiae  con- 
secrator." 

"  Eucharistia  habet  virtute  verborum  sacramentalium,  tarn  corpus 
quam  sanguinem  Christi,  vera  et  realiter  ad  quemlibet  ejus  punctum." 


PRE-REFORMATION  REFORMERS. 


Indebted  to  the  great  schism  in  the  Roman  Church, 
which  gave  that  Church  work  enough  to  occupy  it  at 
home,  to  being  allowed  to  end  his  days  in  peace.  He 
was  seized  with  an  illness  during  Mass,  on  the  feast  of 
St.  Thomas  a  Becket,  and  died  on  the  feast  of  Pope 
Sylvester,  a.d.  1384. 

It  would  be  unjust  to  attribute  to  Wicliffe  all  the 
opinions  of  his  followers,  the  Lollards  ;  but  that  he 
held  many  opinions  with  which  Churchmen  cannot 
sympathize,  there  is  no  doubt.  Such,  for  instance,  as 
the  wickedness  of  the  priest  vitiates  the  acts  of  his 
ministry ;  tithes  are  mere  alms,  to  be  given  or  with- 
held at  the  option  of  parishioners;  Church  endowments 
may  be  claimed  by  the  patron,  or  the  king.  So  that 
we  may  be  thankful  the  Reformation  was  not  carried 
out  by  him.  He  was  a  man  to  pull  down  a  house, 
not  to  build  one  up.  He  would  have  pulled  down 
the  Church  of  Rome,  but  with  it  he  would  have 
pulled  down  the  Catholic  Church  also,  and  would 
have  left  no  foundation  on  which  to  build  the  super- 
structure. 

But  there  is  one  work  for  which  he  deservedly 
merits  the  obligations  of  English  Churchmen,  and  that 
is,  his  translation  of  the  whole  Bible  into  English. 
Sir  Thomas  More,  indeed,  asserted  that  Wiclifife's  was 
not  the  first  translation  ;  but  this  assertion  has  never 
been  verified.  Translations  of  certain  portions,  it  is 
true,  had  before  appeared.  Csedmon,  in  the  seventh 
century,  had  paraphrased  detached  portions  of  the 
Bible  in  verse  ;  Bede  translated  St.  John's  Gospel ; 
Aldhelm  the  Psalms ;  the  translation  of  the  four  Gos- 
pels had^been  begun,  and  perhaps  finished,  by  King 
Alfred;  Elfric  translated  the  Pentateuch,  and  some 
other  books  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  some  of  the 

s 


258 


THE  ANGLO-ROMAN  CHURCH. 


New  ;  the  Normans  translated  the  Psalter  into  their 
own  dialect.  But  Wicliffe's  was  the  first  translation 
of  the  whole  Bible. 

We  must  remember  that  the  art  of  printing  had 
not  then  been  invented,  and  that  every  book  had  to 
be  written  with  the  pen.  The  cost  of  Wycliffe's  Bible 
in  1429  was  £2  i6i-.  Zd.,  when  money  was  about  the 
tenth  of  its  present  value.  We  are  told  of  the  great 
value  which  people  put  upon  its  possession.  Those 
who  could  not  afford  to  buy  the  whole  volume,  would 
give  a  load  of  hay  for  some  favourite  chapters.  The 
possession  of  the  book  was  a  dangerous  one ;  the  for- 
bidden treasure  was  often  hidden  under  the  floors  of 
houses ;  people  would  escape  to  the  woods,  there  to 
read  in  solitude,  or  would  sit  up  all  night  with  locked 
doors,  for  fear  of  surprise.  The  Word  of  the  Lord 
must  have  been  precious  in  those  days,  when  people 
would  risk  their  lives  for  its  possession ;  not  unfre- 
quently  scraps  of  the  Bible  were  burnt,  with  their  pos- 
sessors, at  the  stake. 

Wicliffe's  translation  unfortunately  was  made  from 
the  Vulgate,  as  he  was  unacquainted  with  the  original 
language  of  the  Bible.  Yet  the  translation  was  no 
contemptible  one.  "At  this  day,"  says  Professor 
Blunt',  "the  New  Testament  (the  Old  has  never  been 
printed)  might  be  read  in  our  churches  without  the  ne- 
cessity of  many,  even  verbal,  alterations  ;  and,  on  com- 
paring it  with  the  authorized  version  of  King  James, 
it  will  be  found  that  the  latter  was  hammered  on 
Wicliffe's  anvil.  It  was  inevitable  there  should  be 
imperfections ;  but  they  were  mostly  removed  in  the 
later  and  more  popular  version  of  John  Purvey''." 

'  Reformation,  p.  95. 

■  Truth  compels  us  to  state,  that  in  the  persecution  which  followed 


PRE-REFORMATION  REFORMERS. 


Of  course,  the  translation  of  the  Bible  met  with 
strong  opposition.  The  historian,  Knighton,  says 
that  Master  John  Wicliffe,  in  translating  the  Bible 
from  Latin  into  English,  has  rendered  it  so  common, 
that  "  the  Gospel  pearl  is  cast  abroad,  and  trodden 
under  foot  of  swine."  In  the  primacy  of  Archbishop 
Arundel,  the  successor  of  Courtney,  it  was  enacted, 
that  "  no  one  henceforth  do  translate  any  text  of  the 
Holy  Scripture  into  the  English  tongue,  or  any  other, 
by  way  of  book  or  treatise ;  nor  let  any  book  or  trea- 
tise now  lately  composed  in  the  time  of  John  Wicliffe, 
or  since,  or  hereafter  to  be  composed,  be  read  in  whole 
or  in  part,  in  public  or  in  private,  under  fine  of  the 
greater  excommunication." 

It  has  been  said  before  that  Wicliffe  was  the  fore- 
runner, if  not  the  actual  author,  of  the  Reformation. 
No  country,  under  ordinary  circumstances,  would  seem 
less  likely  than  Bohemia  to  be  influenced  from  Eng- 
land, But  Richard  II.  had  married  a  Bohemian  prin- 
cess, "  the  good  Queen  Anne."  The  number  of  tracts 
which  Wicliffe  wrote  during  his  retirement  at  Lutter- 
worth seems  incredible ;  these  tracts  having  after  his 
death  been  carried  into  Bohemia,  as  is  supposed  by 
the  Bohemian  ladies  and  attendants  who  returned  there 
after  the  queen's  death,  received  an  extensive  circu- 
lation in  that  country  ;  the  extent  may  be  judged  from 
the  fact  that  Lupus,  Bishop  of  Prague,  consigned  two 
hundred  of  his  works  to  the  flames,  because  they  con- 
tained heresy.  Some  of  his  works,  however,  escaped, 
and  his  opinions  were  eagerly  taken  up  in  Bohemia 
by  a  young  man  named  John  Huss.    Huss  was  in 

against  the  Lollards  (the  first  occasion  on  which  heresy  in  England  was 
made  punishable  with  death),  John  Purvey  recanted  ;  it  is  probable,  how- 
ever, that  he  afterwards  recanted  his  recantation. 

S  2 


26o 


THE  ANGLO-ROMAN  CHURCH. 


consequence  summoned  before  the  Council  of  Constance 
(a.d.  1414 — 1418),  by  which  he  was  condemned  to 
death ;  being  degraded  from  his  orders,  and  thus  be- 
coming again  a  layman,  he  was  committed  to  the  flames, 
his  ashes  and  unconsumed  pieces  of  his  clothes  being 
thrown  into  the  Rhine,  lest  the  people  should  treasure 
them  as  relics.  Ten  months  afterwards,  his  old  friend 
and  companion,  Jerome  of  Prague,  was  condemned  by 
the  same  council  to  the  same  fate. 

This  Council  of  Constance  also  ordered  the  bones 
of  Wicliffe  to  be  burnt,  a  sentence  which,  however, 
was  suspended  till  the  time  of  Pope  Martin  V.,  in 
1428.  The  prelate  who  saw  the  sentence  carried  out 
was  Fleming,  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  once  Wicliffe's  friend, 
and  the  champion  of  his  opinions ;  by  his  order  the 
ashes  were  thrown  into  the  Swift,  the  stream  that  flows 
by  Lutterworth  ;  but  the  Swift  bore  them  to  the  Avon, 
the  Avon  to  the  Severn,  the  Severn  to  the  Sea,  to  be 
dispersed  into  all  lands  ;  "  which  things,"  says  Professor 
Blunt "  are  an  allegory." 

Thus  Wicliffe  prepared  the  way  for  Huss,  and  Huss 
for  Luther. 

The  followers  of  Wicliffe,  who  were  called  Lollards — 
(a  name  probably  derived  from  their  practice  of  singing 
Psalms — "  lollen  "  or  "  lullen,"  in  one  of  the  old  German 
dialects,  signifying  "  to  sing,"  as  a  mother  "  lulls  "  her 
child  to  sleep — )  so  rapidly  increased,  that,  not  long 
after  Wicliffe's  death,  one  half  of  England  was  said  to 
have  been  Lollards ;  the  University  of  Oxford  for  a 
long  time  remained  Wicliffite,  whilst  at  court  "  the  good 
Queen  Anne  "  was  known  to  be  well  disposed  to  them 

'  Reform.,  p.  85. 

"  That  she  was  a  diligent  reader  of  her  Bible,  we  learn  from  the  sermon 
which  Archbishop  Arundel  preached  at  her  funeral,  "  quod  quamvis  ad- 


PRE-REFORMATION  REFORMERS. 


261 


But  the  Lollards,  who  began  with  teaching  the  ex- 
treme doctrines  of  Wicliffe,  ended  by  preaching  ex- 
treme revolution,  not  only  in  Church,  but  also  in  State, 
and  so  became  dangerous  members  to  society  at  large. 
As  to  the  Church,  they  lost  all  reverence  for  the  Sac- 
raments ;  dispensed  with  the  services  of  the  priest  in 
matrimony ;  ordained  their  own  ministers " ;  claimed 
the  right  of  nuns  and  monks  to  marry ;  despised 
Saints'  days,  and  treated  the  Lord's  day  as  a  mere 
Jewish  ordinance ;  they  would  willingly  have  stripped 
the  churches,  spoiled  the  monasteries,  and  confiscated 
the  Church's  lands ;  so  that  they  were  regarded  not 
only  as  heretics,  but  as  rebels. 

King  Richard  was  averse  to  persecution,  so  under 
him  the  Lollards  were  allowed  to  escape  with  impunity. 
To  Arundel,  who,  a.d.  1397,  had  succeeded  Courtney 
in  the  primacy,  and  to  the  clergy  °,  Henry  IV.  owed 
his  usurpation.  Arundel  was  the  inveterate  hater  of 
the  Lollards ;  to  his  primacy  we  must  attribute  the 
first  laws  against  heresy,  and  the  beginning  of  those 
fearful  religious  persecutions  which,  for  two  centuries 
onward,  were  the  disgrace  of  England.  Hitherto  ex- 
communication had  been  the  only  punishment  for  spi- 
ritual offences,  and  the  Lollards  did  not  care  for  ex- 
communication. Henry  was  determined  to  strengthen 
his  doubtful  title  by  the  alliance  of  the  Church  ;  it  has 
been  said  that  to  the  clergy  the  sanguinary  statute, 

vena  esset  et  peregrina,  tamen  quatuor  Evangelia  in  linguam  Anglicam 
versa  et  doctorum  commentariis  declarata,  assidue  meditaretur."  The 
translation  she  used  must  have  been  Wicliffe's. 

"  Walsingham  says  of  them  :  "  in  tantam  sunt  evecti  temeritatem,  ut 
eorum  Presbyteri  more  Pontificum  novos  crcarent  Presbyteros,  asserentes 
quemlibet  sacerdotem  tantam  habere  potestatem  conferendi  sacramenta 
ecclesiastica  quantum  Papa." 

"  This  is  the  only  instance  in  history,  in  which  the  clergy,  as  a  body, 
were  disloyal.    (Southey's  Book  of  the  Church,  208.) 


262 


THE  ANGLO-ROMAN  CHURCH. 


"  de  haeretico  comburendo,"  is  entirely  attributable  ;  it 
is  certain  they  bore  their  share  in  it ;  but  it  was  a  sin 
of  the  whole  nation  P;  and  a.d.  1400,  the  first  law 
under  which,  in  England,  heresy  was  made  punish- 
able with  death,  was  passed. 

The  statute  sets  forth  that  "  diverse  false  and  per- 
verse persons,  under  colour  of  dissembled  holiness, 
preached  and  taught  new  doctrines  and  heretical  opi- 
nions, made  unlawful  conventicles,  held  schools  and 
wrote  books ;  that  they  refused  the  authority  of  the 
bishop,  and  wandered  from  diocese  to  diocese,  stirring 
up  the  people  to  insurrection  and  sedition." 

Trials  in  the  civil  courts  were  suspended ;  offenders 
against  the  act  were  to  be  proceeded  against  accord- 
ing to  the  canons ;  being  convicted  by  the  diocesan, 
they  were  fined  and  committed  to  prison ;  if  they  re- 
fused to  abjure,  on  a  certificate  from  the  bishop  or  his 
commissary  of  their  being  condemned  for  heresy,  the 
sheriffs  and  their  officers  were  constrained  "  forthwith 
in  some  high  place,  before  the  people  to  do  them  to 
be  burnt,"  "to  the  end  that  such  punishment  might 
strike  in  fear  to  the  minds  of  others." 

Such  was  this  execrable  statute ;  and  from  the  time 
of  its  passing  to  the  Reformation,  except  when  the 
country  was  too  much  engaged  in  its  struggles  with, 
or  in,  the  "  Wars  of  the  Roses,"  to  think  about  the 
Church ;  when,  to  use  the  beautiful  language  of  Ful- 
ler, "  the  very  storm  was  their  refuge,"  the  history 
of  the  Church  is  an  almost  unbroken  succession  of 
martyrs  and  confessors. 

Within  a  few  months  of  the  passing  of  the  act, 
William  Sautre,  priest  of  St.  Osyth,  in  the  city  of 

p  Rot.  Pari.,  iii.  459 :  it  was  the  act  of  "  Praslati  et  clerus  ac  etiam 
communitates  dicti  regni  in  eodem  Parliamento." 


PRE-REFORMATION  REFORMERS. 


263 


London,  was  its  first  victim.  He  had,  when  in  the 
diocese  of  Norwich,  confessed  himself  a  Lollard,  but 
had  recanted ;  in  London,  having  expressed  his  denial 
of  transubstantiation,  he  was  convicted  as  a  relapsed 
heretic.  Having  undergone  a  sevenfold  degradation 
from  his  different  orders,  from  priest  to  sexton,  and 
his  tonsure  being  rased  away.  Archbishop  Arun- 
del delivered  him  as  a  secular  person  to  the  secular 
authorities;  and  Feb.  26,  1401,  he  was  burnt  at 
Smithfield. 

The  second  victim  was  John  Badby,  a  tailor,  who, 
being  convicted  of  heresy  by  his  diocesan,  was  brought 
to  London  and  burnt  at  Smithfield  on  March  i,  1410. 

From  this  time  the  persecution  increased.  But 
now  Lollardism  assumed  its  political  rather  than  reli- 
gious aspect,  and  became  more  obnoxious  to  the  civil 
than  the  ecclesiastical  power.  Hence  the  bishops 
were  disposed  to  deal  more  leniently  with  the  Lol- 
lards ;  instead  of  handing  them  over  to  the  civil 
power,  they  frequently  kept  them  imprisoned,  at 
their  own  expense,  in  their  palaces ;  and  it  is  to  this 
"  the  Lollards'  Towers,"  which  still  exist  at  Lam- 
beth and  some  other  palaces,  are  supposed  to  owe 
their  origin. 

The  most  famous  victim  was  Sir  John  Oldcastle, 
commonly  called,  by  right  of  his  wife,  Lord  Cobham, 
a  distinguished  soldier,  who  having  embraced  the 
doctrines  of  Wicliffe,  soon  drifted  into  the  socialist 
doctrines  inherent  to  Lollardism.  He  sought  to  in- 
timidate the  king  and  hierarchy,  by  affixing  notices 
to  the  London  churches  that  the  Lollards,  100,000 
strong,  were  ready  to  withstand  all  opposed  to  them. 
When  cited  to  appear  before  Archbishop  Arundel,  he 
at  first  absented  himself,  and  was  pronounced  contu- 


264 


THE  ANGLO-ROMAN  CHURCH. 


macious  ;  but  being  apprehended,  his  opinions  were 
pronounced  by  a  court  of  clergy  to  be  heretical ;  he 
was  excommunicated  and  committed  to  the  Tower, 
from  which  however,  owing,  it  is  supposed,  to  court 
favour  and  the  connivance  of  the  authorities,  he  con- 
trived to  escape. 

Henry  V.  had  not  long  been  king,  when  news  was 
brought  to  him  at  Eltham  that  Lord  Cobham,  at  the 
head  of  25,000  men,  was  marching  on  London;  the 
king  managed  to  crush  the  movement  at  the  outset ; 
Lord  Cobham  escaped,  but  thirty  of  his  followers 
were  captured,  and  were  first  hung  as  traitors,  and 
then  burnt  as  heretics.  Three  years  afterwards,  being 
again  engaged  in  treasonable  designs,  he  was  himself 
captured;  and  a.d.  141 7,  as  he  shewed  no  signs  of 
recanting,  he  was  hung  in  chains  at  St.  Giles-in-the- 
Fields,  over  a  slow  fire,  praying  to  God,  and  com- 
mending his  soul  to  his  Redeemer. 

The  only  writer  who  had  set  himself  to  the  work 
of  convincing  the  Lollards,  was  Reginald  Peac(5ck,  at 
first  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph,  from  which,  in  1449,  he  was 
translated  to  Chichester.  In  1457,  in  the  primacy  of 
Bourchier,  Peacock,  a  zealous  defender  of  the  Church 
against  Lollardism,  and  one  who  in  the  present  day 
would  be  called  an  Ultramontane,  had  the  misfortune 
to  be  mistaken  for  a  Lollard,  and  was  only  saved  from 
the  flames  by  a  public  abjuration  at  St.  Paul's  Cross. 
The  Councils  of  Pisa,  Constance  and  Bale  had  de- 
clared the  Pope  to  be  only  "primus  inter  pares,"  and 
answerable  to  the  Church,  by  which  he  might  be  de- 
posed. Against  this  Peacock,  then  Bishop  of  St. 
Asaph,  had  preached  in  a  sermon  at  St.  Paul's  Cross ; 
in  it  he  maintained  that  the  Pope  was  the  source  of 
all  power,  and  other  bishops  only  his  delegates ;  he 


PRE-REFORMATION  REFORMERS. 


265 


advocated  papal  provisions  and  the  payment  of  an- 
nates, and  so  much  was  his  conduct  approved  at  Rome, 
that  he  was,  as  stated  above,  translated  in  1449  to 
the  see  of  Chichester.  Unfortunately  for  him  he  at- 
tempted to  effect  a  reconciliation  of  the  Lollards  to 
the  Church,  and  with  that  view  wrote  a  book  en- 
titled a  "  Treatise  of  Faith."  In  the  book  he  shews 
that  Scripture  is  the  only  perfect  and  substantial  basis 
of  belief ;  he  seemed  also  somewhat  inconsistently  to 
call  in  question  the  infallibility  of  the  Church  ;  but 
whatever  there  was  in  the  book,  there  was  nothing  in 
it  of  Lollardism.  He  was,  however,  expelled  from 
the  House  of  Lords  ;  his  books  were  pronounced  by 
Archbishop  Bourchier  to  be  heretical,  and  himself  to 
be  burnt  or  to  abjure  ;  he  preferred  the  latter ;  habited 
in  his  episcopal  robes,  he  at  St.  Paul's  delivered  up 
his  books  to  be  cast  into  the  flames ;  he  confessed  his 
faults,  and  abjured  every  erroneous  tenet  imputed  to 
him  ;  and  he  passed  the  remainder  of  his  life  in  soli- 
tary confinement,  under  circumstances  of  great  cruelty, 
— all  writing-materials  and  all  books,  except  a  Bre- 
viary, a  Mass-book,  a  Psalter,  and  a  Bible,  being 
taken  from  him, — in  Thorney  Abbey,  in  Cambridge- 
shire, where  he  died 

The  period  between  a.d.  1455  H^S,  was  taken 
up  with  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  and  was  one  of  the 
most  disastrous  periods  of  English  history.  In  1485 
Henry  Tudor,  Earl  of  Richmond,  who  was  recognised 
as  head  of  the  Lancastrian  party,  defeated  and  slevy 
Richard  HI.  at  the  battle  of  Bosworth ;  and  having 

■>  In  a  statute  of  King's  College,  Cambridge,  provision  was  made  that 
every  scholar,  at  the  end  of  his  probation,  should  abjure  the  errors  or 
heresies  "Johannis  Wiclif,  Reginaldi  Peacock,"  &c.  (Hardwick,  Mid. 
Ages,  422  n.) 


266 


THE  ANGLO-ROMAN  CHURCH, 


married  Elizabeth  of  York,  daughter  of  Edward  IV., 
thus  uniting  the  rights  of  the  rival  parties,  became 
king,  under  the  title  of  Henry  VII.  His  reign,  which 
brought  peace  to  the  State,  brought  also  a  renewal  of 
persecution  to  the  heretics ;  so  many  heretics  were 
burnt,  that  Erasmus  wrote  from  Cambridge  (an  inex- 
cusable joke),  that  in  consequence  the  price  of  wood 
was  increased'';  at  this  time  Bishop  Nix,  of  Norwich, 
who  could  speak  of  those  whom  he  suspected  of  heresy 
as  "  savouring  of  the  frying-pan,"  bears  an  infamous 
notoriety.  The  venerable  age  of  fourscore  years  was 
no  protection  to  a  lady  of  some  quality,  named  Joan 
Boughton,  who  was  for  heretical  opinions  burnt  at 
Smithfield,  a.d.  1498.  A  still  crueller  scene  was  wit- 
nessed at  Amersham,  at  the  execution  of  Tylsworth 
in  1506,  when  his  only  daughter,  who  was  suspected 
of  holding  the  same  opinions  as  her  father,  was  com- 
pelled not  only  to  witness  his  death,  but  with  her  own 
hands  to  light  his  funeral  pyre. 

Many  people,  under  such  a  cruel  persecution,  ab- 
jured their  opinions.  Such  were  obliged  to  carry 
a  faggot  at  the  execution  of  those  who  had  greater 
courage  than  themselves ;  their  hands  being  then 
tied,  they  were  branded  on  the  cheeks  with  a  hot 
iron,  thus  "  bearing,"  as  it  was  said,  "  in  their  bodies, 
the  marks  of  the  Lord  Jesus,"  whilst  for  the  rest  of 
their  lives  they  were  obliged  to  wear  a  faggot  worked 
on  the  left  sleeve. 

By  the  time  that  Henry  had  become  king,  it  was 
remarked  on  all  sides  that  a  Reformation  in  the  disci- 
pline of  the  Church  (for  of  a  doctrinal  Reformation, 
except  the  Lollards,  there  were  but  few  advocates), 

'  "  Istis  hsereticis  vel  hoc  nomine  sum  iniquior,  quod,  instante  bruma, 
nobis  auxerint  lignorum  pretium." 


PRE-REFORMATION  REFORMERS. 


267 


and  with  regard  to  the  pretensions  of  the  Popes,  could 
not  be  much  longer  deferred.  Its  necessity  had  been 
admitted  even  by  cardinals  of  the  Church  of  Rome, 
at  the  three  councils  summoned  at  Pisa,  Constance, 
and  Bale,  each  of  which  was  attended  by  delegates 
from  the  English  Church, 

Of  late  years  a  great  revival  of  learning  and  litera- 
ture had  taken  place.  The  study  of  the  Classics  had 
been  introduced  into  Italy  and  the  neighbouring  coun- 
tries by  the  Greeks,  who  had  taken  refuge  there  when 
the  Turks  captured  Constantinople.  The  revival  of 
learning  was  liberally  patronised  at  Rome  itself.  In 
15 13,  Leo  X.,  son  of  Lorenzo  the  Magnificent,  the 
patron  of  literature  and  art,  and  the  first  to  esta- 
blish a  printing-press  in  the  country,  became  Pope 
at  the  early  age  of  thirty -seven,  and  under  him 
Rome  became  the  centre,  where  all  the  scholars  of 
the  world  met. 

A  similar  revival  had  taken  place  in  England.  In 
1476  Caxton  had  set  up  the  first  printing-press; 
books  had  multiplied ;  the  study  of  Greek  and  He- 
brew, which  enabled  people  to  read  the  Bible  in  its 
original  language,  was  encouraged.  In  1506  Erasmus, 
who  may  be  called  the  parent  of  Biblical  criticism,  had 
gone  to  Cambridge,  where  he  was  appointed  Margaret 
Professor  of  Divinity  and  Professor  of  Greek.  Though 
he  never  left  the  Church  of  Rome,  he  confessed  and 
exposed  its  errors ;  and  he  taught,  quite  as  strongly  as 
Luther,  or  any  of  the  Reformers,  with  regard  to  the 
Bible,  that  "  the  sun  should  not  be  more  common  than 
Christ's  doctrines."  It  was  Erasmus  who  first  dared 
to  call  in  question  the  hitherto  deemed  infallible  au- 
thority of  the  Vulgate  ;  to  publish  for  the  Western 
Church  (and  that  with  the  sanction  of  the  Pope  him- 


268 


THE  ANGLO-ROMAN  CHURCH. 


self),  in  the  original  Greek,  the  Gospels  and  Epi- 
stles of  St.  Paul,  and  to  explain  in  his  paraphrase 
the  hitherto  sealed  meaning  of  the  New  Testament. 

In  1526  Tyndale  had  published,  at  Worms,  his 
translation  of  the  New  Testament  in  English.  Under 
the  auspices  of  Archbishop  Warham  and  Bishop  Tun- 
stall,  search  was  made,  and  all  the  copies  that  could 
be  found  were  solemnly  burnt  in  Cheapside  in  the 
following  year ;  but  the  supply  was  not  diminished  ; 
men  would  have  their  Bibles,  although  the  price  was 
about  three  shillings  and  sixpence,  or  the  value  of  a 
working-man's  fortnight's  wages. 

Books,  and  copies  of  the  Bible,  as  well  as  facilities 
for  reading  and  understanding  them,  multiplied  ;  the 
foundation  of  colleges,  and  other  seminaries  of  educa- 
tion, promoted  largely  the  study  of  the  ancient  au- 
thors ;  the  intelligence  of  the  middle  and  lower  classes 
induced  a  spirit  of  enquiry,  a  desire  to  learn  whether 
the  doctrines  they  had  blindly  accepted  were,  or  were 
not,  really  the  doctrines  of  the  primitive  and  best  ages 
of  the  Church. 

Then,  again,  there  was  the  influence  of  the  prelates, 
men  of  piety  and  learning,  whom  Henry  the  Seventh 
had  appointed.  There  were  others  to  be  found,  like 
Colet,  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  who,  a  liberal  patron  of  the 
Greek  language,  and  an  educational  as  well  as  a  doc- 
trinal Reformer,  founded  St.  Paul's  school ;  a  man 
who,  as  Dean,  insisted  on  an  improvement  in  the 
quality  and  number  of  the  cathedral  services  ;  who,  in 
his  sermons  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  exposed  the  vices 
of  the  clergy,  and  delivered  lectures  on  the  Epistles, 
for  which  he  was  accused  of  heresy  by  the  Bishop 
of  London,  although  to  no  purpose,  to  Archbishop 
Warham, 


PRE-REFORMATION  REFORMERS. 


269 


It  was  clear  a  Reformation  must  come  before  long ; 
how  was  it  to  be  effected  ?  Whether  the  Roman  doc- 
trines of  transubstantiation  and  purgatory,  and  in- 
dulgences, and  enforced  celibacy,  were  primitive  doc- 
trines of  the  Church,  people  at  that  time  troubled 
themselves  but  little  ;  it  was  the  papal  supremacy  in 
England  that  was  called  in  question ;  it  was  asked 
why  the  English  Church  and  nation  should  be  im- 
poverished to  support  a  foreign  jurisdiction  ?  why  im- 
mense sums  of  money,  by  means  of  annates  and 
first-fruits  and  payments  for  bulls  and  dispensations, 
should  be  drained  out  of  the  country  to  enrich  the 
Pope  of  Rome  ? 


PART  V. 


Zbc  (Tburcb  of  tbc  IReformation  iSra. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME,  HENRY  VIII. 

"AS  early  as  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth,  or  even 
the  latter  part  of  the  fifteenth  century,"  says 
Ranke,  "  throughout  all  Christendom  a  general  strug- 
gle was  made  to  curtail  the  rights  of  the  Pope 
England  having  ended  its  wars  of  the  houses  of  York 
and  Lancaster,  was  not  in  a  humour  to  brook  the 
pretensions  and  exactions  of  Rome  any  longer ;  and 
the  time  had  arrived  when  its  independence  was  to 
be  re-asserted,  and  a  change  in  the  foreign  relations 
of  the  Church  effected. 

So  far  from  the  Reformation  in  England  being 
a  violent  revolution,  or  a  separation  from  the  Catholic 
Church  and  the  foundation  of  a  new  Church,  it  was 
an  essentially  conservative  movement,  and  a  return 
to  primitive  antiquity  ^ ;  so  that  the  same  Church,  with 
some  errors  cleared  away,  and  some  doctrines  and 
discipline  of  the  primitive  and  purest  ages  of  the 
Church  restored,  existed  after,  as  before  the  Refor- 
mation,   "  So  far  was  it  from  the  Church  of  England 

'  History  of  the  Popes,  i.  25. 
So  says  Hammond :  "  Ecclesia  Britannica.  ,  .  .  huic  basi  Reforma- 
tionem  niti  vult,  ut  scripturis  primae,  dein  primorum  saeculorum  episcopis, 
martyribus,  scriptoribus,  ecclesiasticis  secundae  deferantur."  And  Ca- 
saubon  :  "  Si  me  conjectura  non  fallit,  totius  Reformationis  pars  in- 
tegerrima  est  in  Angli4,  ubi  cum  studio  veritatis,  viget  studium  An- 
tiquitatis." 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME. 


271 


to  forsake  and  reject  the  Churches  of  Italy,  Rome, 
Spain,  and  Germany,  or  any  such  like  Churches,  that 
it  doth  with  reverence  retain  those  ceremonies  which 
do  neither  endanger  the  Church  of  God,  nor  offend 
the  minds  of  sober  men  ;  and  only  departed  from 
them  in  those  particular  points  wherein  they  were 
fallen  from  themselves  in  their  ancient  integrity,  and 
from  the  Apostolical  Churches,  which  were  their  first 
founders 

So  that  the  Church  of  England  was  not,  as  some 
people  imagine,  founded  at  the  Reformation  ;  it  was 
not  Roman  Catholic  before,  and  Protestant  since ; 
it  was  the  same  Catholic  Church  which  had  existed 
from  the  beginning,  the  same  which  St.  Augustine 
found  when  he  first  landed  in  this  country.  At  the 
Reformation  no  new  principle  was  introduced.  There 
were  the  same  bishops,  the  same  clergy,  the  same 
convocation  afterwards  as  there  were  before.  And, 
what  is  more,  the  clergy  themselves,  who,  be  it  re- 
membered, were  then,  if  ever,  Romanist,  were  the 
very  people  who  were  instrumental  in  effecting  it. 
Grievances,  partly  civil  and  partly  ecclesiastical,  re- 
quired to  be  remedied ;  the  remedies  were  frequently 
suggested  by  the  clergy ;  at  any  rate,  they  were  ef- 
fected by  the  co-operation  of  Convocation  and  Par- 
liament, with  the  ratification  of  the  Crown  But 

*  Canon  xxx. 

So  writes  Archbishop  Wake  to  Du  Pin  :  "  Proponitur  quzestio  Epi- 
scopis  ac  clero  in  utriusque  Provinciae  synodo  congregatis,  an  Episcopus 
Romanus  in  sacris  Scripturis  habeat  aUquam  majorem  jurisdictionem  in 
regno  Angliae  quam  quivis  alius  externus  Episcopus  ?  .  .  .  Quod  Episcopi 
cum  suo  clero  statuerant,  etiam  regni  Academic  calculo  suo  appro- 
barunt.  Rex  cum  Parliamento  sancivit."  So  also  Laud  against  Fisher: 
"  In  the  English  Reformation,  our  princes  had  their  parts,  and  the 
clergy  theirs ;  and  to  these  two  principally  the  power  and  direction 
for  Reformation  belong." 


272        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA, 


whenever  anything  affecting  the  doctrine  or  discipline 
of  the  Church  was  called  in  question,  no  change  was  in 
any  case  effected  without  the  sanction  of  the  Church  ; 
and  after  all,  we  are  able  to  say  with  Archbishop 
Bramhall,  *'  We  have  not  left  the  Church  of  Rome  in 
essentials  :  we  retain  the  same  Creed  to  a  word ;  and 
in  the  same  sense  by  which  all  the  primitive  Fathers 
were  saved,  which  they  held  to  be  sufficient." 

Churchmen  need  not  be  careful  to  defend  the  cha- 
racters of  such  men  as  Henry  VIII.  and  Somerset; 
they  might  have  been  as  bad  as  they  are  represented ; 
nor,  again,  need  they  concern  themselves  with  the 
lawfulness  of  Henry's  marriage  with  Katharine  or 
Ann  Boleyn ;  for  such  matters  are  mere  accidents, 
and  cannot  affect  the  Reformation  of  the  Church  of 
England.  The  same  may  be  said  with  regard  to  the 
suppression  of  the  monasteries  ;  the  temporal  pro- 
moters of  the  Reformation  may  have  had  temporal 
motives,  for  which  the  Church  cannot  be  made  re- 
sponsible. Henry  VIII.  was  only  the  means  which 
God  employed,  as  He  often  did  employ  wicked  men 
to  carry  out  His  righteous  ends*.  From  the  time 
that  the  Roman  empire  became  Christian,  the  ancient 
Church  was  more  or  less  subject  to  the  sometimes 
tyrannical  will  of  princes  ;  whilst,  in  modern  times, 
the  Roman  Catholic  countries  of  France,  Italy,  Spain, 
and  Portugal,  have  felt  too  severely  the  weight  of  the 
temporal  power,  to  be  able  to  taunt  us  with  our 
misfortunes. 

That  a  Reformation  was  to  some  extent  necessary, 
almost  all  Churchmen  will  allow ;  and  if  in  the  mode 

'  "  Qui  dedit  imperium  Constantino  Christiano,  ipse  etiam  Apostatas 
Juliano:  qui  Mario  imperium  dedit,  etiam  Caio  Cjesari;  qui  Augusto, 
ipse  et  Neroni," — (St.  August,  de  Civ.  Dei.) 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME. 


of  carrying  it  out  there  may  be  causes  for  regret,  we 
have  many  reasons  also  to  be  thankful.  The  cha- 
racter, the  motives,  even  the  acts  of  Henry  VIII., 
except  that  he  confiscated  property  which  ought  to 
have  gone  to  the  Church,  affect  us  not  at  all ;  the  Re- 
formation under  him  was  only  a  turning-point  in  the 
history  of  our  Church,  and  Henry  the  sign-post  be- 
tween the  old  and  new  paths.  The  reforms  effected 
under  Henry,  and  under  Edward  VI.,  were  swept 
away  by  Queen  Mary ;  and  except  as  far  as  they 
were  re-enacted  by  Elizabeth,  and  ultimately  com- 
prised in  the  Act  of  Uniformity  of  Charles  II.,  do 
not  concern  the  Church  in  the  present  day  ^  We  are 
only  concerned  with  Henry  VIII.  with  respect  to  the 
old  fabric,  not  as  the  builder  of  the  new  :  and  with 
regard  to  the  former,  we  shall  be  able  to  shew  that 
the  supremacy  of  the  Pope  was  properly  and  consti- 
tutionally abrogated  by  the  united  action  of  Church 
and  State ;  those,  therefore,  who  say  that  the  English 
Church  is  Erastian,  or  a  Parliamentary  Church,  be- 
cause Henry  VIII.  terminated  the  papal  supremacy 
in  England,  might  with  equal  or  greater  justice  as- 
sert that  the  Church  of  Rome  is  an  Erastian  or  State 
Church,  because  the  supremacy  was  given  it  by  a 
usurper  and  murderer,  the  Emperor  Phocas,  who 
conferred  on  Boniface  III.  that  title  of  "Universal 
Bishop,"  which  only  a  few  years  before  Gregory  the 
Great  had  stigmatised  as  blasphemous,  and  savouring 
of  Antichrist. 

The  Reformation  in  England  may  not  be  all  that 

'  "Had  Cranmer  and  Ridley  promulgated  a  Socinian  Liturgy  and 
Articles,  the  circumstance  need  not  in  the  slightest  degree  have  affected 
the  basis  on  which  the  acts  of  the  subsequent  reign  were  founded." 
—(Gladstone's  State  in  Relation  to  the  Church.) 

T 


2  74       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


could  be  desired ;  some  think  it  went  too  far,  others 
not  far  enough ;  yet  all  have  reason,  at  any  rate,  to 
be  thankful  that  it  was  no  worse.  The  Reformation, 
which  began  under  Henry  VIII.,  was  not  completed 
till  the  reign  of  Charles  II.  We  may  well  be  thank- 
ful that  it  did  not  proceed,  as  in  Germany  or  Switzer- 
land, from  one  individual ;  had  this  been  the  case,  had 
it  come  sooner  under  Wicliffe,  we  might  have  been 
Wickliffites;  had  it  come  later,  under  Edward  VI.,  we 
might  have  been  Zwinglians  or  Calvinists  ;  as  it  is, 
we  bear  no  human  name  :  "  we  are  neither  of  Paul  or 
Apollos,  but  have  been  led  back  at  once  to  the  dis- 
tant fountains,  whence  the  waters  of  life,  fresh  from 
their  sources,  flowed  most  freely."  In  one  word,  we 
are  Catholics  ;  our  Church  is  continuous,  one  with  the 
Pre-reformation  Church,  differing  only  as  "  a  garden 
weeded,  from  a  garden  unweeded^,"  We  maintain 
the  continuity  of  the  Church  by  our  Apostolic  minis- 
try ;  we  have  the  same  Creeds,  the  same  Sacraments, 
the  same  doctrine  as  the  ancient  Church ;  we  have 
our  Articles,  which,  if  they  err,  it  is  on  the  side  of 
comprehension,  not  exclusion ;  above  all,  we  have,  as 
it  were  by  a  miracle,  our  noble  Liturgy,  the  heritage 
of  1 800  years  :  our  Reformers  did  not  discard  it ;  they 
mutilated  it,  it  is  true,  but  not  in  any  vital  point ;  and 
it  has  descended  to  us,  violently  indeed  treated,  but 
in  all  its  practical  and  necessary  integrity''. 

When  Henry  VIII.  ascended  the  throne,  it  seemed 
little  likely  that  under  him  would  be  accomplished 
the  extinction  of  the  papal  supremacy,  for  no  man 
was  a  more  zealous  papist  than  he,  or  more  devoted 
to  the  interests  of  the  Roman  pontiff.  He  had  been 
educated  during  the  lifetime  of  his  elder  brother,  with 
'  Archbishop  Bramhall.  ^  Tracts  for  the  Times. 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME. 


the  view  to  some  high  position  in  the  Church.  He 
presented  himself  as  the  champion  of  the  Pope,  and 
opponent  of  Luther ;  and  for  the  book  which  he 
wrote  against  the  German  Reformer,  he  was  after- 
wards rewarded  by  the  Pope  himself  in  full  conclave 
with  the  title  of  "  Defender  of  the  Faith."  To  the 
end  of  his  life  he  remained  a  Romanist,  and  perse- 
cuted those  who  opposed  that  faith. 

But  whilst  men  were  thinking  what  was  best  to  be 
done  in  the  corrupt  state  of  the  Church,  a  trivial  and 
ignoble  event  put  in  motion  the  long-meditated  re- 
form. Prince  Arthur,  eldest  son  of  Henry  VH.,  had 
married  Katharine,  daughter  of  Ferdinand  and  Isa- 
bella of  Spain,  with  a  dowry  of  two  hundred  thousand 
ducats ;  but  as  he  died  soon  afterwards,  whilst  a  mere 
boy,  the  money  would  have  relapsed  to  the  King  of 
Spain.  The  loss  of  so  much  money  out  of  his  family 
was  intolerable  to  the  avaricious  King  of  England,  who 
therefore  obtained  a  dispensation  from  Pope  Julius  H., 
(which  Warham,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  protested 
against  as  contrary  to  the  word  of  God),  and  married 
Katharine  to  his  son  Henry.  As  long  as  Henry  en- 
joyed his  wife's  fortune,  and  he  had  hopes  of  a  son, 
he  entertained  no  scruples  as  to  the  legality  of  the 
marriage.  But  after  he  had  lived  with  Katharine 
nearly  twenty  years,  and  she  was  growing  old  (for  the 
eight  years  by  which  she  was  his  senior  made  the 
difference  more  apparent  as  time  went  on)  ;  when  he 
had  spent  her  money,  and  she  had  only  yielded  him 
a  daughter ;  moreover,  after  he  had  contracted  an  at- 
tachment to  Ann  Boleyn ;  then  he,  a  zealous  papist, 
and  having  the  Pope's  dispensation  for  the  marriage, 
held  that  the  marriage  was  illegal,  professed  remorse 
for  having  married  his  brother's  widow,  and  deter- 

T  2 


2^6       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

mined  on  a  divorce.  Of  course,  if  he  felt  that  he  was' 
living  in  sin,  this  was  right ;  it  did  not  follow  that  he 
ought  to  marry  some  one  else. 

As  to  the  lawfulness  of  his  marriage  with  Katha- 
rine opinions  differed ' ;  and  Wolsey,  who  was  Arch- 
bishop of  York  and  Chancellor  of  the  kingdom,  as 
well  as  a  cardinal,  undertook  to  arrange  a  divorce  for 
the  king,  and  asked  the  Pope  to  declare  that  the  dis- 
pensation granted  by  Pope  Julius  was  illegal,  and  the 
marriage  void  ;  at  the  same  time  informing  him  that,  in 
case  of  refusal,  he  would  lose  England.  But  the  Pope 
halted  between  two  opinions  :  he  did  not  wish  to  dis- 
please Henry,  and  to  lose  England ;  nor  could  he 
afford  to  displease  the  powerful  emperor,  Charles  V., 
who  was  Katharine's  nephew.  He  tried  to  please 
both,  and  he  appointed  another  legate,  Campeggio, 
whom  Henry  had  lately  made  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  to 
try  the  case  in  England,  in  conjunction  with  Wolsey. 
Before  this  papal  tribunal  the  king  and  queen  ap- 
peared. It  may  not  unreasonably  be  asked,  Why  did 
the  king  recognise  the  court,  if  it  was  not  a  legitimate 
one,  in  his  dominions  ?  The  answer  is  plain.  Matri- 
monial causes  had  from  time  immemorial  been  con- . 
sidered  as  subjects  for  the  Pope's  decision ;  even  Wil- 
liam the  Conqueror,  who  certainly  was  no  champion 
of  the  Pope's  prerogative,  acknowledged  it  when  he 
wished  to  marry  his  cousin;  now,  particularly,  Henry 
would  be  desirous  of  the  Pope's  sanction,  to  prevent 
doubts  as  to  the  succession.  The  queen's  cause  was 
espoused  by  Fisher,  Bishop  of  Rochester  (afterwards 

'  Luther's  opinion  was  that  whether  the  marriage  was  legal  or  illegal, 
after  so  many  years  of  cohabitation,  separation  would  be  a  greater 
enormity  than  the  marriage,  however  improper  it  might  have  been  in 
the  first  instance. 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME, 


277 


martyred),  and  Ridley,  uncle  of  the  future  martyr ; 
whilst  Gardiner,  the  most  eminent  Canonist  of  the 
day,  and  Bonner,  were  on  the  part  of  the  king.  In 
vain  did  Campeggio  try  to  induce  the  queen  to  retire 
into  a  convent ;  the  Emperor  prevailed  on  the  Pope, 
Clement  VII.,  to  transfer  the  case  to  Rome,  where 
the  king  and  queen  were  summoned  to  appear,  either 
in  person  or  by  proxy. 

But  this  was  more  than  the  imperious  temper  of 
Henry  would  tolerate,  and  his  wrath  vented  itself 
upon  Wolsey,  who,  by  acting  as  the  Pope's  legate, 
had  brought  himself  under  the  statute  of  Praemunire, 
and  so  incurred  the  forfeiture  of  his  goods,  and  ban-- 
ishment  from  the  kingdom.  Henry  sacrificed  Wolsey 
for  not  ridding  him  of  his  wife,  as  he  afterwards  sacri- 
ficed Crumwell  for  getting  him  an  ugly  one.  But  it 
was  a  flagrant  act  of  injustice  to  enforce  the  act  against 
Wolsey.  It  was  with  the  king's  consent  that  the  Pope 
had  made  him  a  cardinal,  and  it  was  by  the  king's  re- 
quest, and  contrary  to  his  own  wishes,  that  he  had 
accepted  the  post  of  legate.  Wolsey  knew  that  by 
accepting  the  latter  office  he  was  transgressing  the 
law,  but  he  naturally  thought  that  the  king's  licence 
under  the  great  seal  was  sufficient,  and  for  fifteen 
years  he  had  exercised  the  office  to  the  king's  ap- 
proval. But  for  this  one  offence  all  his  offices  were 
taken  from  him ;  he  was  deprived  of  the  office  of 
Chancellor  ^  his  property  was  confiscated,  and  he  re- 
tired to  York.  For  a  short  time  he  regained  the 
king's  favour,  and  the  archbishopric  was  restored  to 
him ;  soon,  however,  he  was  arrested  on  a  charge  of 
high  treason  (for  what  new  offence  does  not  appear) ; 

This  was  for  the  first  time  bestowed  upon  a  layman,  Sir  Thomas 
More. 


278       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


on  his  way  to  London  to  answer  to  that  charge,  he  died 
broken-hearted  at  Leicester  on  November  30,  1530; 
a  man  who,  although  second  as  Archbishop  of  York 
in  ecclesiastical  rank,  was  not  only  in  ecclesiastical 
dignity,  but  as  Chancellor  of  England  in  political  im- 
portance also,  incomparably  the  first  man  in  England ; 
he  was  also  a  cardinal  of  Rome,  and  at  that  very  time 
an  aspirant  to  the  papacy. 

Shortly  before  the  death  of  Wolsey,  in  the  autumn 
of  1529,  Cranmer,  whilst  acting  as  tutor  in  a  gentle- 
man's family  at  Waltham,  met  there  two  of  the  king's 
retinue,  Gardiner,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Winchester, 
and  Fox,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Hereford.  The  con- 
versation turned  on  the  great  topic  of  the  day,  the 
divorce  ;  Cranmer  expressed  his  opinion  that  the  Pope 
had  no  power  to  dispense  with  the  law  of  God ;  that 
the  question  turned  upon  the  interpretation  of  Scrip- 
ture, of  which  the  members  of  the  Universities,  learned 
in  divinit}^  were  the  best  judges.  This  being  related 
to  the  king,  he  sent  for  Cranmer,  who  he  said  had 
"  got  the  sow  by  the  right  ear ;"  he  appointed  him 
one  of  his  chaplains,  and  sent  him  on  an  embassy  to 
Rome,  under  the  Earl  of  Wiltshire,  the  father  of  Ann 
Boleyn,  for  the  purpose  of  furthering  the  divorce,  and 
obtaining-  a  favourable  answer  from  the  Universities  ^ 
He  managed  to  obtain  (we  are  not  told  by  what 
means  he  did  so)  judgments  in  favour  of  the  divorce 
from  twelve  Universities ;  Oxford  and  Cambridge  re- 

'  After  \-isiting  the  Universities,  Cranmer  spent  some  time  in  Ger- 
many, where  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  the  German  reformers,  who 
so  greatly  influenced  his  after  opinions.  He  had  before  been  married 
to  a  relation  of  the  keeper  of  the  "  Dolphin  Inn"  at  Cambridge,  named 
Joan,  who  was  commonly  known  as  "  Black  Joan  ;"  but  as  she  died 
within  a  year,  he  was  allowed  to  retain  his  fellowship,  and  he  now  took 
to  wife  the  daughter  of  Osiander,  one  of  the  Gennan  reformers. 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME. 


luctantly  assented  under  great  pressure ;  the  Convo- 
cations of  Canterbury  and  York  formed  a  similar  judg- 
ment ;  fortified  with  these  opinions,  the  king  thought 
the  matter  sufficiently  settled  without  the  Pope's  dis- 
pensation, and  privately  married  Ann  Boleyn.  Shortly 
before  this,  in  August,  1532,  Warham  died,  and  Cran- 
mer,  who  would  willingly  have  declined  so  dangerous 
an  honour,  was  nominated  as  his  successor.  Clement 
the  Pope  could  not  have  much  liked  the  nomination, 
but  not  wishing  to  hasten  a  rupture,  he  sanctioned  the 
appointment,  on  condition  of  Cranmer  taking  the  oath 
of  canonical  obedience  to  him.  But  here  it  is  impos- 
sible to  acquit  Cranmer  of  dishonesty ;  he  swore  alle- 
giance to  two  masters,  who  had  no  two  interests  in 
common.  He  swore  to  the  Pope  "  that  he  would 
from  that  hour  forward  be  faithful  and  obedient  to 
St.  Peter,  and  to  the  Holy  Church  of  Rome,  to  my  Lord 
the  Pope  and  his  successors ;  that  they  should  suffer 
no  wrong  by  any  means  with  his  advice,  consent,  or 
connivance  ;  that  their  counsel  he  would  not  discover ; 
their  regality  he  would  help,  maintain,  and  defend 
against  all  men."  To  the  king  he  swore  "  that  he 
would  henceforth  utterly  forsake  all  clauses,  words, 
sentences,  grants,  which  he  had  or  should  have  here- 
after from  the  Popes  Holiness  in  virttie  of  his  bishop- 
ric, that  in  any  wise  were  or  might  be  prejudicial  to 
his  highness,  his  heirs,  successors,  dignity,  privilege,  or 
estate  royal ;  that  to  him  and  his  he  would  be  faithful 
and  true,  and  live  and  die  with  him  against  all  people ; 
that  he  acknowledged  to  hold  his  bishopric  of  him  only, 
and  accordingly  besought  of  him  the  temporalities  of 
the  same"."  Cranmer  took  the  oath  to  the  Pope 
under  a  mental  reservation,  that  he  "  intended  not  by 

"  Prof.  Blunt's  Reformation,  p.  127. 


■28o       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

the  oath  to  bind  himself  to  do  anything  contrary  to 
the  laws  of  God,  to  the  king's  prerogative,  or  to  the 
commonwealth  and  statutes  of  the  kingdom ;"  that  is 
to  say,  he  took  the  oath  in  one  sense,  whereas  he 
knew  the  Pope  was  administering  it  in  another ;  the 
bulls  for  the  consecration  (the  last  that  were  ever  is- 
sued for  an  English  see)  were  granted,  and  on  March 
20.  1533.  Cranmer  was  consecrated  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury.  Agreeably  with  the  determination  of 
the  Universities,  the  opinions  of  eminent  Canonists, 
and  the  judgments  of  the  Convocation  of  Canterbury 
and  York,  at  a  council  held  at  Dunstable,  Cranmer, 
with  whom  were  associated  the  Bishops  of  London, 
Winchester,  Bath,  and  Lincoln,  and  many  other  great 
prelates",  annulled  the  king's  marriage  with  Katha- 
rine, and  on  May  28,  in  a  court  held  at  Lambeth,  he 
confirmed  his  marriage  with  Ann  Boleyn. 

Already,  even  during  the  lifetime  of  Archbishop 
Warham,  a  circumstance  had  transpired  typical  of 
what  the  Church  might  expect  from  such  a  capricious 
ruler  as  Henry.  A  discovery  was  made  that  both 
the  Church  and  nation  had  been  equally  guilty  with 
Wolsey  under  the  statute  of  Praemunire,  in  having  re- 
cognised his  legatine  authority.  The  king  pardoned 
the  laity  without  any  fine,  or  rather  the  laity  par- 
doned themselves  in  Parliament ;  but  against  the 
clergy  the  king  bore  a  grudge  for  their  reluctant  as- 
sent to  his  divorce,  and  so  to  them  a  very  different 
measure  was  meted  out.  It  was  usual  with  the  clergy 
at  that  time  to  tax  their  own  body  in  Convocation. 
The  king  was  in  want  (he  always  was  in  want)  of 
money ;  so  he  informed  the  clergy  that,  though  they 
were  liable  to  the  confiscation  of  all  their  property, 
"  Fuller,  B.  v.  44. 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME. 


281 


he  would  release  them  on  the  payment  of  the  sum  of 
^100,844  Ss.  S(/.  for  the  Province  of  Canterbury,  and 
;^i8,840  OS.  lod.  for  York;  an  immense  sum,  equiva- 
lent to  more  than  a  million  at  the  present  day.  Nor 
was  this  all;  as  a  condition  of  his  pardon,  he  required 
them  to  acknowledge  him  as  "  sole  Protector  and  Su- 
preme Head  of  the  Church."  But  this  title  was  en- 
tirely new,  and  the  clergy  agreed  that  it  belonged  to 
a  spiritual  and  not  a  temporal  head,  so  they  were  un- 
willing to  place  in  the  king's  hands  such  a  power  as 
the  title  might  be  construed  to  confer.  Nor  were  they 
any  more  willing  to  concede  it  when  the  title  was  mo- 
dified by  the  addition  of  the  words  "  under  God ;"  so 
after  a  debate  of  three  days,  they  only  agreed  to  the 
title  being  allowed  "as  far  as  is  permitted  by  the 
law  of  Christ","  Subject  to  this  limitation,  it  was 
agreed  to  by  nine  bishops,  sixty-two  abbots  and 
priors  of  the  Upper  House,  and  a  majority  of  the 
Lower  House. 

But  in  the  northern  Convocation,  Bishop  Tunstall 
recorded  a  protest  against  the  title  being  conceded 
even  with  this  limitation,  as  being  ambiguous ;  "  if  it 
was  understood  to  relate  merely  to  secular  and  civil 
jurisdiction,  he  and  all  the  English  clergy  were  ready 
to  accept  it  with  complete  acquiescence,  but  against 
any  notions  of  a  spiritual  headship  he  protested."  Yet 
with  this  reservation,  which  was  supported  by  Arch- 
bishop Warham,  the  Royal  Supremacy  was  sanctioned 
by  both  Convocations;  but  in  the  "Act  of  Supre- 
macy," passed  in  1534,  the  limitation  clause  was  most 
disingenuously  omitted,  so  that  the  clergy  never  did 

"  "  Ecclesia  et  Cleri  Anglican!  singularem  protectorem,  et  unicum,  et 
supremum  dominum,  et  quantum  per  Christi  legem  decet^  etiam  suprc- 
mum  caput,  ipsius  majestatem  recogniscimus." 


282        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


agree  to,  nor  are  they  responsible  for,  that  unwarrant- 
able interpretation  of  the  Royal  Supremacy.  They, 
however,  acknowledged  that  Convocation  ought  to  be 
assembled,  not  as  hitherto,  by  the  writ  of  the  arch- 
bishop, but  the  writ  of  the  king,  and  promised  not  "  to 
promulge  or  put  in  ure  any  new  canons,  constitutions 
and  ordinances,  provincial  or  synodal,  without  the 
royal  authority." 

Having  gained  this  great  victory  over  Convocation, 
Henry  now  turned  his  attention  to  a  matter  in  which 
the  people  were  thoroughly  in  accord  with  him,  the 
suppression  of  the  papal  authority  in  England  ;  and 
accordingly,  in  the  Parliament  of  a.d.  1532 — 1533, 
two  important  acts,  the  one,  "  the  Annates  Act,"  the 
other,  the  famous  act  called  "  the  Statute  for  the 
restraint  of  Appeals,"  were  passed. 

The  preamble  to  the  former  act  states,  that  An- 
nates had  first  been  paid  to  Rome  for  maintaining 
forces  against  the  infidels ;  that  since  the  second  year 
of  King  Henry  VII.  no  less  than  60,000  sterling 
had  been  drawn  out  of  the  country  in  payment  of 
them.  The  payment  of  Annates  was  henceforward, 
except  under  some  slight  restrictions,  prohibited  ;  the 
Pope's  censures  were  rendered  insignificant,  and  the 
"  bishops  and  clergy  were  to  go  on  in  their  functions, 
notwithstanding  any  excommunications  or  interdictions 
to  the  contrary."  It  must  be  observed  that  the  Statute 
against  the  payment  of  Annates  was  passed  at  the 
request  of  Convocation.  The  clergy  had  imagined 
that  for  the  future  they  would  be  delivered  from  such 
payments  ;  instead  of  this,  they  only  exchanged  their 
master;  for  by  an  act  of  1534,  the  right  to  first-fruits 
and  tenths  was  vested  in  the  king. 

In  the  preamble  to  "the  Statute  of  Appeals,"  it  is 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME. 


283 


Stated  that  "  divers  sundry  old  authorities  declare  that 
under  the  ancient  constitution  of  the  realm  of  Eng- 
land, were  included  the  spirituality  and  temporality 
under  one  head,  the  king."  As  to  the  former,  the 
preamble  sets  forth,  "  the  body  spiritual  whereof 
having  power  when  any  cause  of  the  law  divine 
happened  to  come  in  question,  or  of  spiritual  learn- 
ing, then  it  was  declared,  interpreted,  and  shewed  by 
that  part  of  the  body  politic  called  the  spirituality, 
now  being  usually  called  the  English  Church,  which 
always  hath  been  reputed  and  also  found  of  that 
sort,  that  both  for  knowledge,  integrity,  and  suffi- 
ciency of  number,  it  hath  been  always  thought,  and 
is  also  at  this  hour,  sufficient  and  meet  of  itself,  with- 
out the  intermeddling  of  any  exterior  person  or  per- 
sons, to  declare  and  determine  all  such  doubts,  and 
to  administer  all  such  offices  and  duties,  as  to  their 
rooms  spiritual  doth  appertain."  Wherefore  it  was 
enacted  that  all  causes  should  be  determined  within 
the  kingdom,  notwithstanding  any  appeals  to  Rome, 
or  inhibitions,  or  bulls  from  Rome.  Appeals  were 
to  be  made  from  the  archdeacon  to  the  bishop,  from 
the  bishop  to  the  archbishop,  or  the  Dean  of  the 
Court  of  Arches,  where  the  matter  was  to  be  settled  ; 
but  in  cases  affecting  the  king,  an  appeal  was  allowed 
to  the  Upper  House  of  Convocation,  where  they 
should  be  finally  determined. 

Parliament  met  again  in  January,  1534,  and  several 
acts  of  importance  to  the  Church  were  passed.  In 
March  of  that  year,  the  Pope  issued  a  bull  annulling 
the  sentence  of  divorce  pronounced  by  Cranmer,  con- 
firming the  marriage  with  Katharine,  and  excommuni- 
cating Henry,  if  he  did  not  within  a  fixed  time  return 
to  her.  Thus  the  rupture  between  England  and 
Rome  was  complete. 


284       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


The  first  important  proceeding  of  the  session  of 
1534,  was  to  throw  into  an  Act  of  ParHament  the 
submission  which  the  clergy  had  made  in  Convocation 
two  years  before.  The  preamble  of  the  Statute  known 
as  "  the  Submission  of  the  Clergy,"  sets  forth  :  "  the 
clergy  of  this  realm  have  not  only  acknowledged,  ac- 
cording to  the  truth,  that  the  same  clergy  is,  always 
has  been  ^,  and  ought  to  be,  assembled  by  the  king's 
writ ;  but  also,  submitting  to  the  king's  Majesty,  have 
promised  in  Vcrbo  Sacerdotii  that  they  will  never 
from  henceforward  presume  to  attempt,  allege,  claim, 
or  put  in  ure,  enact,  promulge,  or  execute  any  canons, 
constitutions,  ordinance,  provincial  or  other  .  ,  ,  unless 
the  king's  most  royal  assent  and  licence  may  to  them 
be  had,  to  make,  promulge,  and  execute  the  same." 
The  second  part  of  the  statute  was  the  answer  to 
a  petition  from  the  clergy  for  a  revision  of  the  Canon 
Law  :  "  Several  of  the  old  canons  and  constitutions 
being  complained  of  as  prejudicial  to  the  prerogative 
royal,  and  contrary  to  the  statutes  of  the  realm,  it 
is  therefore  enacted  that  the  king  shall  have  power 
and  authority  to  assign  two-and-thirty  persons,  six- 
teen of  the  clergy  and  sixteen  of  the  laity,  to  ex- 
amine, abrogate,  or  confirm  the  canons  as  they 
thought  fit.  Till  such  a  review  was  made,  all  those 
canons  which  were  not  contrary  to  the  law  or  pre- 
rogative, were  to  remain  in  force 'i."    All  appeals  to 

p  Collier  says  that  it  is  certain  Convocation  did  acknowledge  the  truth 
of  this  preamble ;  but  that  it  is  also  certain  Convocation  met  frequently 
by  the  sole  authority  of  the  bishop,  (ii.  84). 

1  A  "Reformatio  Legum  Ecclesiasticarum"  was  made  in  the  reigns  of 
Henrj  VIII.  and  Edward  VI.,  and  was  prevented  in  each  case  by  the 
death  of  the  king.  Another  attempt  was  made  in  1571,  under  Arch- 
bishop Parker,  and  brought  before  the  House  of  Commons  ;  but  this 
again  fell  through.  "As  the  matter  now  stands,  the  canons  of  the 
universal  Church  are  binding  on  English  Churchmen,  when  they  have 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME.  285 

Rome  are  again  prohibited  under  Praemunire.  But 
a  change  was  made  in  the  final  Court  of  Appeal ;  an 
appeal  was  allowed  from  the  archbishop  to  the  king 
in  chancery,  to  be  heard  by  delegates  appointed  by 
the  Crown. 

The  next  act  regulated  the  appointment  of  arch- 
bishops and  bishops.  "  From  henceforth  no  per- 
son shall  be  presented,  nominated,  or  commended  to 
the  Pope  or  see  of  Rome,  for  any  archbishopric  or 
bishopric  within  this  realm.  Neither  shall  any  person 
procure  any  bulls,  briefs,  or  palls  from  the  see  of 
Rome,  or  pay  any  annates,  or  sums  of  money  there." 
As  to  the  election  of  bishops,  the  statute  proceeds, — 
"  The  king,  upon  the  vacancy  of  the  see,  was  to  send 
his  conge  d'elire  to  the  dean  and  chapter,  or  prior  or 
convent ;  and  in  case  they  delayed  their  election  be- 
yond twelve  days,  the  Crown  was  empowered  to  no- 
minate the  persons  by  letters  patent.  .  .  .  And  lastly, 
if  the  persons  assigned  to  elect  or  consecrate,  defer 
performing  their  respective  offices  for  twenty  days, 
they  were  to  fall  under  the  penalty  of  a  Praemunire." 

Another  statute  provides  that  "  neither  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  or  any  other  person,  shall  have 
power  to  visit  religious  houses;"  and  gives  the  king 
the  right  to  visit  all  monasteries  and  colleges  hitherto 
exempt.  In  these  matters,  although  the  royal  pre- 
rogative had  been  stretched  to  the  uttermost,  and 
the  realm  had  invested  the  king  with  a  perilous  au- 
thority in  questions  concerning  the  discipline  of  the 
Church,  no  point  of  Church  doctrine  had  been  at- 
tacked, and  there  was  nothing  which  Convocation, 

been  received  and  adopted  by  English  synods,  and  are  not  contrariant 
to  English  law,  either  canonical  or  statute."— (Perry's  Student's  Eng. 
Church  Hist.,  p.  297.) 


286       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

much  as  it  must  have  disapproved,  was  bound  to 
oppose.  So  that  when,  in  June,  1534,  the  question 
was  submitted  to  the  Provinces  of  Canterbury  and 
York,  "Whether  the  Bishop  of  Rome  has  in  the 
Word  of  God  any  greater  jurisdiction  in  this  realm 
of  England  than  any  foreign  bishop  although  many 
of  the  bishops,  such  as  Heath,  afterwards  Archbishop 
of  York,  Tunstall,  Stokesley,  Gardiner,  and  Bonner, 
were  firmly  attached  to  the  doctrines  of  Rome,  they 
decided  that  he  had  not ;  one  bishop  alone.  Fisher  of 
Rochester,  dissenting ;  and  the  Universities  and  clergy 
agreed  in  their  decision  ^ 

On  November  3,  Parliament  met  again  after  its 
prorogation ;  and  the  first  act  passed  by  it  was  the 
Act  of  Supremacy,  which,  whilst  it  professes  to  be 
grounded  on  the  submission  of  the  clergy,  goes  far 
beyond  anything  which  they  had  acknowledged,  and 
is  thoroughly  incompatible  with  the  liberties  of  the 
Church.  It  is  in  these  words :  "  Albeit  the  king's 
majesty  justly  and  rightfully  is  and  ought  to  be  the 
supreme  head  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  is  so  recog- 
nized by  the  clergy  in  their  Convocation ;  yet,  never- 
theless, for  confirmation  and  corroboration  thereof,  and 
for  increase  of  virtue  in  Christ's  religion  within  this 
realm  of  England,  and  to  repress  and  extirp  all  errors, 
heresies,  and  other  enormities  and  abuses  heretofore 
used  in  the  same,  be  it  enacted  by  the  present  Par- 
liament that  the  king,  our  sovereign  lord,  his  heirs  and 
successors,  shall  be  taken,  accepted,  and  reputed  the 
only  supreme  head  on  earth  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, called  Anglicana Ecclesia,  and  shall  have  and  en- 

'  "  Quod  Romanus  Episcopus  non  habet  majorem  jurisdictionem  sibi 
a  Deo  collatam  in  hoc  regno  quam  alius  quivis  externus  Episcopus." — 
(Journ.  of  Conv.) 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME. 


287 


joy,  annexed  and  united  unto  the  imperial  crown  of 
this  realm,  as  well  the  title  and  style  thereof,  as  all  the 
honors,  dignities,  profits,  commodities  to  the  said  dig- 
nity of  supreme  head  of  the  said  Church  belonging 
and  appertaining.  And  that  our  said  sovereign  lord, 
his  heirs  and  successors,  kings  of  this  realm,  shall  have 
full  power  and  authority  from  time  to  time,  to  visit, 
repress,  redress,  reform,  order,  correct,  restrain  and 
amend  all  such  errors,  heresies,  abuses,  contempts  and 
enormities  whatsoever  they  be,  which  by  any  manner 
of  spiritual  authority  or  jurisdiction  ought  or  may  law- 
fully be  reformed,  repressed,  ordered,  redressed,  cor- 
rected, restrained,  or  amended,  most  to  the  pleasure  of 
Almighty  God,  the  increase  of  virtue  in  Christ's  re- 
ligion, and  for  the  conservation  of  the  peace,  unity,  and 
tranquillity  of  this  realm,  any  usuage,  custom,  foreign 
laws,  foreign  authority,  prescription,  or  any  thing  or 
things  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding." 

Soon  after  the  passing  of  this  Act,  the  "  Treason 
Act"  was  passed,  which  constituted  it  high  treason 
to  "  imagine,  invent,  practise  or  attempt  any  bodily 
harm  to  the  king's  most  royal  person,  the  queen's,  or 
their  heirs-apparent,  or  to  deprive  them,  or  any  of 
them,  of  their  dignity,  title,  or  name,  of  their  royal 
estates ;  and  that  all  such  persons  .  .  .  shall  be  ad- 
judged traitors,  and  the  offence  high  treason." 

The  greater  part  of  those  who  refused  to  acknow- 
ledge the  king's  supremacy  were  the  monks.  Amongst 
the  few  others  who  stood  out  against  it  were  Bishop 
Fisher  and  Sir  Thomas  More  :  the  former,  distin- 
guished amongst  the  prelates,  and  venerable  from 
his  age  of  eighty  years ;  the  latter,  the  most  distin- 
guished ornament  of  his  time.  The  offence  of  Fisher 
had  been  increased  by  the  injudicious  act  of  the  Pope 


288  •    THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

in  making  him  a  cardinal,  when  he  was  lying  under 
the  anger  of  the  king.  The  poor  old  man  was  confined 
in  prison  for  a  whole  year,  without  a  fire,  or  even 
sufficient  clothing,  in  winter,  and  was  executed  on  22nd 
June,  1535.  To  have  taken  the  life  of  such  a  man 
as  Fisher  was  a  disgraceful  act ;  no  less  so  was  the 
execution  of  Sir  Thomas  More  on  6th  July;  and  the 
execution  of  these  two  men  was  regarded  with  horror 
and  indignation  throughout  Christendom. 

Henry  was  not  long  before  he  stretched  his  almost 
unrestricted  prerogatives  to  their  utmost  limit.  Of  all 
the  recusants  to  his  supremacy,  the  monastic  orders 
were  the  chief;  and  the  same  statute  which  made 
Henry  head  of  the  Church,  transferred  the  jurisdic- 
tion over  the  monasteries  from  the  Pope  to  the  Crown. 
With  the  exception  of  the  abbots  who  sat  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  all  the  monks,  but  more  especially 
the  Mendicant  orders,  were  from  the  first  opposed  to 
the  course  pursued  by  Henry.  They  had  few,  or  no 
friends ;  they  were  disliked  by  the  clergy,  with  whom 
they  were  frequently  coming  into  collision ;  they  were 
exempted  from  episcopal  supervision,  so  they  enjoyed 
no  good  will  from  the  bishops  ;  they  had  swallowed 
up  nearly  half  of  the  ecclesiastical  endowments  of  the 
country,  and  they  were  also  the  strong  allies  of  the 
Pope,  so  they  were  an  object  of  hatred  to  the  king. 
The  dissolution  of  the  monasteries,  or  the  conveyance 
of  their  perhaps  excessive  wealth  into  another  channel, 
might  have  been  of  great  advantage  to  the  Church  ; 
but  nothing  was  further  from  the  intention  of  Henry. 
He  wanted  money  ;  there  lies  the  secret  of  their  disso- 
lution. Henry  could  plead  State  emergencies  as  his 
excuse  for  plundering  the  monasteries.  Not  only  had 
the  murder  of  two  such  men  as  More  and  Fisher 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME. 


289 


brought  down  upon  him  the  wrath  of  the  new  Pope, 
Paul  III.  ;  but  Cardinal  Pole,  a  man  of  high  position, 
and  a  near  relative  of  the  king,  was  so  horrified,  that 
he  applied  to  the  Emperor  Charles  V.  to  divert  an 
army  which  he  had  raised  against  the  Turks,  and  to 
turn  it  against  England.  Henry  also  pleaded  his  in- 
tention of  founding  new  bishoprics,  for  which,  in  1532, 
he  had  obtained  a  bull  from  the  Pope.  Unfortunately, 
a  precedent  for  an  attack  upon  the  monasteries  had 
been  set  by  Wolsey  and  by  others,  whose  names  are 
gratefully  recorded  in  the  present  day  as  benefactors 
to  the  Church.  It  was  from  the  forfeited  estates  of 
monasteries  that  William  of  Wykeham  founded  his 
twin  colleges  at  Winchester  and  Oxford.  His  ex- 
ample was  followed  by  Archbishop  Chicheley  and 
William  of  Waynflete,  for  their  two  colleges  of  All 
Souls  and  Magdalen  at  Oxford.  Still  more  recently, 
Wolsey  had  pleaded  that  the  small  monasteries,  in 
which  neither  education  or  religion  was  observed,  were 
superfluous  and  unnecessary,  and  so  he  was  able  to 
procure  as  endowments  for  his  foundations  of  Ipswich 
and  Christ  Church  the  property  of  twenty-four  monas- 
teries, together  with  sixty-nine  benefices  ^ 

Such  precedents  must  have  turned  the  mind  of 
Henry  towards  an  easy  mode  of  raising  money.  In 
1535,  he  determined  to  make  a  royal  visitation  of  the 
kingdom ;  and  as  he  could  not  do  it  personally,  imi- 
tating the  example  of  the  Pope,  which  he  had  before 
renounced,  he  determined  to  appoint  a  Vicar-General, 
or  Vicegerent  in  ecclesiastical  matters,  to  make  the 
visitation  for  him  :  and  so  he  appointed  Crumwell 
to  manage  all  ecclesiastical  causes,  and  to  exercise  all 
ecclesiastical  power  which  belonged  to  the  supreme 

•  Hook's  Lives  of  the  Archbishops,  vi.  65. 
U 


290       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


head ;  to  visit  all  churches,  hospitals,  and  monasteries ; 
to  call  synods  and  convocations  for  any  cause  which 
he  might  think  necessary ;  to  preside  at  and  direct 
the  election  of  prelates,  to  confirm  or  to  annul  them ; 
to  institute  and  induct  into  possession  of  churches ; 
and  to  deal  as  he  liked  with  ecclesiastical  property. 
Pending  the  visitation,  the  jurisdiction  of  the  bishops 
was  suspended ;  none  of  them  were  allowed  to  visit 
the  monasteries  and  churches,  or  the  clergy  of  their 
dioceses,  during  the  visitation,  except  in  case  of  neces- 
sity, when  they  were  to  act  only  "  as  the  king's  com- 
missaries and  Crumwell's." 

At  the  end  of  the  year,  a  general  visitation  of  the 
monasteries  was  determined  upon,  and  Cromwell  ap- 
pointed Doctors  Leighton  and  Leigh,  two  civilians, 
London,  Dean  of  Wallingford,  Richard  Thornton, 
Bishop  Suffragan  of  Dover,  and  a  few  others,  to 
report  on  their  condition. 

■  The  visitation  of  the  smaller  monasteries,  which  had 
a  revenue  under  £200  a-year,  was  first  determined  on  ; 
these  smaller  monasteries,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind, 
were  the  abodes  of  the  Friars,  the  allies  of  the  Pope, 
and  therefore  the  king's  special  enemies.  It  is  not 
improbable  that  these  monasteries  of  the  Mendicants 
were,  as  the  commissioners  stated,  the  most  corrupt ; 
it  is  certain  that  the  Mendicants,  if  once  corrupted, 
would  from  their  vagrant  habits,  their  going  about 
from  house  to  house,  and  thus  having  the  means  of 
spreading  corruption,  be  the  most  dangerous  to  society. 
At  the  same  time,  the  report  of  the  commissioners 
must  be  received  with  some  suspicion ;  they  instituted 
their  enquiries  with  a  view  of  detecting  abuses,  and  of 
confiscating  their  property.  However,  they  reported 
that  these  smaller  monasteries  were  as  bad  as  they 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME. 


291 


could  be  ;  and  an  Act  of  Parliament  was,  without  op- 
position, passed  for  their  dissolution;  376  houses  were 
condemned,  and  their  property,  the  annual  revenue  of 
which  was  valued  at  ^32,000,  besides  ;^ioo,ooo  worth 
of  jewels  and  plate,  was  handed  over  to  the  king  for 
ever,  the  smallest  possible  pension  being  bestowed 
upon  the  expelled  inmates. 

But  what  became  of  the  servants  ?  In  one  mo- 
nastery, where  there  were  only  thirty  monks,  there 
were  no  fewer  than  forty-four  servants  ;  besides  whom 
there  were  the  numerous  out-door  labourers  employed 
upon  the  farms.  And  what  became  of  the  dependants 
and  hangers-on  of  these  establishments, — those  who  re- 
ceived from  them  charity,  many  also  their  livelihood  ? 
In  one  way  or  other,  by  the  first  Act  of  Dissolution, 
ten  thousand  persons  were  thrown  upon  the  world, 
deprived  of  the  means  of  existence ;  some  at  an  ad- 
vanced age,  and  unable  to  work  for  their  daily  bread  ; 
many,  on  the  other  hand,  sturdy  beggars,  at  a  time 
when  the  first  act  of  vagrancy  was  punished  by  whip- 
ping and  cutting  off  part  of  the  right  ear,  and  the  third 
act  was  punished  by  death. 

No  wonder  that  a  rebellion  followed.  One  that 
broke  out  at  Louth,  in  Lincolnshire,  was  suppressed 
without  difficulty.  Another  in  Yorkshire  consisted 
of  100,000  men,  which  assumed  the  name  of  the  "  Pil- 
grimage of  Grace ;"  bearing  a  crucifix  on  one  side  of 
their  banner,  and  a  chalice  and  wafer  on  the  other, 
whilst  on  their  sleeves  they  wore  a  representation  of 
the  five  wounds,  they,  under  the  leadership  of  Robert 
Ashe,  a  country  gentleman,  assumed  formidable  pro- 
portions. The  rebellion,  however,  was  quelled,  not 
by  force  of  arms,  but  by  diplomacy  ("  in  plain  lan- 
guage," says  Dean  Hook,  "by  lying")  ;  the  insurgents 

u  2 


292       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


were  dispersed  by  promises,  which  the  king  neither 
kept,  nor  thought  of  keeping  \ 

But  the  rebelHon,  when  once  it  was  quelled,  instead 
of  warning  the  king,  only  impelled  him  onwards  to 
the  suppression  of  the  larger  monasteries.  The  ex- 
cuse given  for  the  confiscation  of  the  smaller  ones 
was  their  corruption.  But  this  was  not  alleged  against 
the  larger  monasteries  :  on  the  contrary,  their  regu- 
larity and  good  order  was  spoken  of,  and  "  religion 
was  well  kept  and  observed."  But  the  commissioners 
were  men  of  no  principle,  and  were  themselves  charged 
with  inordinate  rapacity,  with  the  embezzlement  of  the 
property  lying  at  their  mercy,  even  abusing  the  oppor- 
tunities which  their  commission  gave  them,  and  cor- 
rupting the  nuns".  It  is  necessary,  in  order  to  form 
a  correct  idea  of  the  state  of  the  monasteries,  and 
Henry's  object  in  confiscating  them,  that  we  should 
bear  in  mind  the  character  and  object  of  the  com- 
ntissioners.  Fuller  says,  "  They  were  men  who  well 
understood  the  message  they  went  on,  and  would  not 
come  back  without  a  satisfactory  answer  to  him  that 
sent  them,  knowing  themselves  were  likely  to  be  losers 
there."  That  they  went  out  with  the  foregone  conclu- 
sion that  the  monasteries  were  corrupt,  or  if  not,  with 
the  settled  intention  of  condemning  them,  is  evident 
from  their  reports  on  Bruton  and  Glastonbury ;  they 
admitted  that  there  was  nothing  objectionable  in  them  ; 
the  brethren,  they  said,  were  kept  too  strict  to  be  able 
to  offend ;  but  they  would,  if  they  could. 

At  the  visitation  of  the  larger  monasteries,  many  of 
the  abbots,  knowing  that  their  doom  was  sealed,  and 
hoping  thus  to  get  better  terms  for  themselves,  made 
a  voluntary  surrender  :  of  the  twenty  -  eight  mitred 
«  Hook,  vi.  85.  ,  "  Prof.  Blunt's  Reform.,  p.  140. 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME. 


abbots,  twenty-five  thus  surrendered.  On  all  the  ver- 
dict of  guilty  was  returned,  and  an  act  was  passed 
which  spoke  of  their  voluntary  resignation,  and  le- 
galising the  confiscation  of  the  houses  already  dis- 
solved, or  hereafter  to  be  dissolved,  to  the  king 
and  his  heirs  for  ever  ^ ;  a  liberal  pension  was  al- 
lowed to  those  who  resigned  ;  some  were  appointed 
to  high  offices  in  the  Church,  as  was  the  case  with 
Benson,  Abbot  of  Westminster,  who  was  appointed 
the  first  Dean  of  Westminster.  The  mitred  abbots 
that  held  out  were  those  of  Reading,  Colchester,  and 
Glastonbury  :  they  were  all  executed.  Glastonbury, 
next  to  Westminster,  was  the  richest  monastery  in 
England :  its  last  abbot  was  Richard  Whiting,  an 
old  man  of  fourscore,  noted  for  his  piety  and  charity. 
Every  Wednesday  and  Friday  crowds  of  poor  as- 
sembled at  the  gates  of  the  abbey  to  receive  his 
bounty  ;  as  many  as  five  hundred  of  the  county 
gentry  availed  themselves  of  the  hospitality  of  his 
table,  whilst  he  gave  free  education  to  three  hundred 
of  their  sons.  He  was  accused  of  having  sent  the 
plate  and  money  of  the  abbey  to  the  rebels  of  the 
North  :  all  that  he  had  done  was  to  conceal  treasures 
which  were  dedicated  to  God,  that  they  might  not 
fall  into  the  sacrilegious  hands  of  the  commissioners. 
He  was  arraigned  at  Wells  on  a  charge  of  high  treason : 
he  was  so  old  that  he  could  with  difficulty  hear  or 
understand  the  case  against  him ;  but  he  was  con- 
demned. In  vain  he  asked  to  be  allowed  to  take 
leave  of  the  monks  of  his  abbey  before  his  execution. 
On  the  next  day,  he  was  dragged  on  a  hurdle  through 

*  The  act  passed  the  House  of  Lords  without  any  protestation  from 
the  mitred  abbots,  ahhough  there  were  present  at  the  first  reading  of 
the  bill,  eighteen  abbots  ;  at  the  second,  twenty ;  at  the  third,  seventeen. 


294       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


the  town  of  Glastonbury  to  Glastonbury  Torre,  outside 
the  town,  where  he  was  executed.  In  the  words  of 
the  chronicler,  "  the  said  abbot's  body  was  divided 
into  four  parts,  and  his  head  stricken  off,  whereof  one 
quarter  standeth  at  Wells,  another  at  Bath,  and  at 
Ilchester  and  Bridgewater  the  rest,  and  his  head  upon 
the  abbey-gate  of  Glaston 

Crumwell,  who  had  condemned  the  poor  abbot  at 
a  tribunal  of  which  he  was  himself  prosecutor,  jury, 
and  judge,  was  soon  to  receive  as  he  had  given.  A 
few  more  months,  and  he,  too,  on  Tower-hill  passed  to 
his  account  ^  the  first,  and  fortunately  the  last,  who 
held  the  office  of  Viceoferent. 

Even  these  confiscations  were  not  sufficient  to  sa- 
tisfy the  king.  So  a  third  statute  was  passed,  a.d. 
1545,  ordering  the  confiscation  of  all  colleges,  chan- 
tries, chapels  and  hospitals,  consisting  of  secular  priests. 
Under  this  statute,  the  two  Universities  were  included, 
and  only  after  strong  remonstrance,  were  exempted  ^ 

The  number  of  monasteries  dissolved  is  computed 
at  645,  the  number  of  colleges  at  90,  of  chantries  and 
chapels  at  2,300,  of  hospitals  at  1 10  :  the  nominal 
value  of  the  rental  must  have  been  about  ^200,000. 

The  king,  before  the  confiscation  of  the  monasteries, 
had  promised  to  create  twenty-one  new  bishoprics,  and 
to  convert  religious  houses  into  chapters  of  deans  and 
prebendaries,  to  be  attached  to  the  new  sees,  or  to  im- 
prove those  already  in  existence.  Instead  of  this,  only 
six  new  sees  were  founded,  and  those  with  very  inade- 

Supp.  Mon.  Camden  Soc.  260. 
'  Froude's  England,  iii.  247  (small  ed.). 

'  This  act  having  been  passed  in  the  last  year  of  the  king's  reign,  the 
commissioners  employed  had  not  time  to  seize  all  the  chantries ;  there- 
fore, in  the  first  year  of  King  Edward  VI.,  cap.  14,  the  other  chantries 
were  adjudged  to  be  vested  in  the  king. 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME. 


quate  endowments  :  Oxford,  from  the  abbey  of  Osney, 
with  the  Dean  and  Canons  of  Christ  Church  for  its 
chapter  ;  Gloucester,  from  the  abbey  of  St.  Peter  in 
that  city ;  Bristol,  from  the  monastery  of  St.  Augustine 
at  Bristol  ;  Peterborough,  from  the  abbey  of  Peter- 
borough ;  Chester,  from  the  monastery  of  St.  Wer- 
burgh ;  and  Westminster,  soon  to  revert  to  its  former 
collegiate  state.  Eight  religious  houses  also  were 
founded.  This  was  all  that  was  done  for  the  Church 
from  the  proceeds  of  the  monasteries ;  the  rest  was 
given,  or  sold  at  a  low  price,  to  the  favourers  of 
the  Court. 

What  became  of  the  buildings  ?  How  they,  once 
the  pride  of  sacred  architecture,  were  treated,  those 
can  tell  who  have  visited  such  ruins  as  Fountains, 
or  Whitby,  or  Tintern,  or  Glastonbury,  or  Reading. 
Some  few  were  converted  into  collegiate  establish- 
ments;  some,  as  St.Alban's,  Tewkesbury,  and  Mal- 
vern, into  parish  churches  ;  but  the  rest  were  ruth- 
lessly destroyed. 

The  immediate  effect  of  the  dissolution  of  the  mo- 
nasteries was  apparent  in  the  immense  prevalence  of 
crime,  and  the  cruel  laws  which  were  passed  to  sup- 
press it ;  whilst  as  many  as  seventy-two  thousand  per- 
sons are  said  to  have  died  at  the  hands  of  the  execu- 
tioner in  this  dreadful  reign.  And  when  it  is  remem- 
bered that  the  number  of  monks  is  supposed  to  have 
amounted  to  100,000,  some  few  only  of  whom  received 
a  small  pension,  there  is  too  much  reason  to  fear  that 
many  must  have  died  of  want,  or,  being  rendered  des- 
perate by  starvation,  must  have  entered  into  the  lawless 
licence  of  the  times,  and  perished  by  the  halter.  One 
thing  is  certain,  that  as  long  as  the  monasteries  re- 
mained, no  further  provision  for  the  poor  was  required ; 


296       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

no  sooner  were  they  suppressed,  than  we  hear  of 
wholesale  executions ;  eighty  men,  for  example,  were 
hanged  in  one  day  for  attacking  some  royal  waggons. 
Soon  arose  the  necessity  for  a  poor-law  ;  the  statute 
of  the  5th  of  Elizabeth  being  the  first  one  of  the  kind 
in  the  land. 

But  other  evils  followed  the  dissolution  of  the  mo- 
nasteries. A  chasm  has  been  left  in  our  history 
which  can  never  be  restored.  There  was  scarcely 
a  religious  house  that  did  not  possess  a  library.  At 
a  time  when  printing  had  only  lately  been  invented, 
and  there  were  few  printed  books,  these  libraries  were 
the  depositories  of  all  the  learning  which  had  de- 
scended from  former  times ;  in  them  were  preserved 
the  records  of  our  Convocations,  the  Acts  of  Parliament, 
as  well  as  the  hereditary  documents  of  private  families. 
If  not  destroyed,  these  were  sold  for  waste  paper; 
they  were  used,  some  "  to  scour  candlesticks,  some  to 
rub  their  boots,  some  sold  to  the  grocers  or  soap- 
boilers, and  some  sent  over  sea  to  bookbinders,  not  in 
small  numbers,  but  at  times  whole  ships  full,  to  the 
wondering  of  foreign  nations ;  a  single  merchant  pur- 
chasing, at  forty  shillings  apiece,  two  noble  libraries  to 
be  used  as  grey-papers 

To  the  same  cause  is  to  be  attributed  the  rise  of 
lay-impropriations.  The  system  of  "  impropriation," 
of  buying  livings,  and  assigning  from  them  just  a 
sufficient  sum  to  stipendiary  curates  for  the  mainte- 
nance of  divine  service,  by  which  the  property  of 
the  Church  is  dissevered  from  the  parish  priest,  took 
its  origin  from  the  monks  as  far  back  as  the  time 
of  the  Conquest.  Rectories  were  thus  reduced  to 
vicarages,  the  great  tithes  going  to  the  monastery, 
^  Spelman's  Hist,  of  the  Fate  of  Sacrilege. 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME. 


297 


which  supplied  a  vicar  ("  vicarius,"  some  one  in  place 
of  the  Rector)  to  take  the  duty.  But  the  "  lay-impro- 
priator"  was  a  person  not  known  before  the  dissolution. 
To  lessen  the  unpopularity  which  would  have  followed 
on  that  act,  Crumwell  suggested  to  the  king  the  sale, 
at  an  easy  price,  of  the  abbey-lands  and  the  tithes  to 
the  landed  gentry,  who,  not  residing  on  the  property, 
received  the  highest  price  they  could  obtain,  and  paid 
the  smallest  pittance,  sometimes  no  stipend  at  all,  but 
simply  his  board,  to  a  clergyman,  generally  some  cast- 
off  or  half-starved  Friar,  who  could  hardly  say  Matins, 
to  do  the  duty.  No  one  of  education  could  be  found 
to  take  these  miserable  benefices,  so  that  the  bishop 
was  often  obliged  to  ordain  the  lowest  mechanics.  To 
such  an  extent  did  this  evil  increase,  and  so  ignorant 
and  wicked  had  the  clergy  become,  that  Archbishop 
Parker  enjoined  his  suffragans  to  reject  such  candi- 
dates for  Holy  Orders ;  and  then  arose  another  evil, 
although  the  only  alternative,  pluralities 

No  wonder  that,  under  such  circumstances,  the  seeds 
of  that  dissent  were  sown,  which  was  soon  to  grow 
into  a  large  tree,  and  to  spread  its  poison  through 
the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land.  But  so  it  was. 
There  was  sown  the  seed  of  the  Puritans,  with  which 
the  ignorance  of  the  clergy  was  unable  to  cope.  There 
were  Predestinarians,  there  were  Antinomians,  there 
were  Anabaptists,  and  Fifth  Monarchy  men, and  Arians, 
and  Unitarians,  and  Libertines'^;  sects  without  any 
positive  doctrine,  but  all  opposing  the  conservative 
principles  of  the  Reformation ;  embryo  Protestants 
they  might  be  called,  holding  nothing  themselves,  and 
protesting  against  everything  ;  disbelieving  all  that  did 
not  exactly  square  with  their  negative  notions  of  re- 

•  Prof.  Blunt,  144.  Ibid.,  158. 


298        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


ligion ;  yet  gaining  strength  during  the  remainder  of 
Henry's  reign,  and  increasing  ever  stronger  and 
stronger,  till,  in  the  time  of  Charles  and  Laud,  they 
formed  the  majority  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and 
included  Church  and  King  in  a  common  ruin. 

The  Royal  Supremacy  having  been  established,  and 
the  revenues  of  the  monasteries  transferred  to  the 
Crown,  Henry's  interest  in  the  Reformation  waned. 
He  had  determined  that  the  throne  and  Church  of 
England  should  be  free,  but  he  declared  again  and 
again  that  it  was  not  his  intention  to  make  any  change 
in  doctrine,  or  to  deviate  in  any  way  from  the  Catholic 
faith  of  Christendom At  the  same  time,  with  the 
view  of  promoting  uniformity,  several  useful  measures, 
probably  at  the  instigation  of  Cranmer,  were  adopted 
during  this  reign. 

I.  The  first  of  these  was  a  Primer  in  1535,  a  tract 
drawn  up  by  Cuthbert  Marshall,  Archdeacon  of  Not- 
tingham, and,  at  the  recommendation  of  Convocation, 
published  with  the  king's  authority.  It  is  prefaced  by 
an  admonition,  which  cautions  people  against  certain 
books  lately  published,  which  were  liable  to  give 
people  a  wrong  idea  of  the  Christian  religion  :  for 
though  a  distinction  was  drawn  in  them  between  La- 
tria  and  Dulia,  the  first  being  the  higher  worship  due 
to  God  alone,  yet  in  practice  the  distinction  had  been 
forgotten,  and  thus  God  and  His  creatures  were  put 
too  much  on  a  level.  The  chief  object  of  the  Primer 
was  to  furnish  the  unlearned,  as  its  name  implies, 
with  such  parts  of  the  Church's  service  as  were  most 
required,  in  the  vulgar  tongue.  It  contained  the 
Apostles'  Creed,  the  Ten  Commandments,  and  a 
paraphrase  of  the  Lord's  Prayer ;  after  which  followed 
'25  Henry  VIII.  c.  21. 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME. 


299 


the  Ave  Maria,  the  seven  penitential  Psalms,  and 
a  Litany. 

2.  The  Primer  being  intended  for  the  young,  the 
next  year,  a.d.  1536,  Ten  Articles,  derived  chiefly 
from  the  "  Confession  of  Augsburg,"  were  published, 
"  devised  by  the  king's  highnes  majestie  to  stablish 
Christen  quietnes  and  unitie  among  us,  and  to  avoide 
contagious  opinions."  After  much  discussion  in  Con- 
vocation between  the  followers  of  Cranmer  on  the  one 
side,  and  those  of  Stokesley  on  the  other  \  between 
whose  opinions  they  were  a  compromise,  they  were 
agreed  to  by  both  houses ;  and  being  signed  by  the 
two  archbishops,  seventeen  bishops,  forty  abbots  and 
priors  of  the  Upper,  and  fifty  members  of  the  Lower 
House,  whilst  at  the  head  of  the  signatures  stood  the 
name  of  Crumwell,  the  Vicegerent,  they  were  finally 
issued  by  the  king's  authority.  They  consisted  of  two 
parts,  the  first  five  relating  to  doctrine,  the  last  five 
to  "the  laudable  ceremonies  used  in  the  Church." 

L  (i.)  The  people  were  to  be  instructed  to  believe 
the  Bible  and  three  creeds  as  the  only  source  of  faith 
and  doctrine,  and  to  condemn  all  heresies  contrary  to 
the  four  general  councils.  (2.)  Baptismal  regeneration 
is  asserted ;  children  dying  unbaptized  could  not  be 
saved,  and  the  opinions  of  the  Anabaptists  and  Pela- 
gians are  condemned.  (3.)  Penance,  consisting  of  con- 
trition, confession,  and  amendment,  is  a  Sacrament  in- 
stituted by  Christ,  and  necessary  to  salvation  for  those 

'  The  Upper  Houses  of  Convocation  were  tolerably  equally  divided  ; 
to  one  party  belonged  Cranmer,  Goodrich,  Bishop  of  Ely,  Shaxton  of 
Sarum,  Hugh  Latimer  of  Worcester,  Fox  of  Hereford,  Hillsey  of  Ro- 
chester, Barlow  of  St.  David's.  To  the  other,  Lee,  Archbishop  of  York, 
Stokesby,  Bishop  of  London,  Tunstal  of  Durham,  Gardiner  of  Winchester, 
Sherburne  of  Chichester,  Nix  of  Norwich,  and  Kite  of  Carlisle. 


300       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

who  have  fallen  into  sin  after  baptism ;  the  words  of 
the  priest  pronouncing  absolution  are  "the  very  words 
and  voice  of  God  Himself,  as  if  He  should  speak  to 
us  out  of  heaven."  (4.)  In  the  Sacrament  of  the  altar, 
under  the  forms  of  bread  and  wine,  there  is  "  verily, 
substantially  and  really  combined  and  comprehended, 
the  very  self-same  Body  and  Blood  of  our  Saviour 
Jesus  Christ,  which  was  born  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  and 
suffered  upon  the  cross  for  our  redemption."  (5,)  Jus- 
tification, on  the  ground  of  any  merit' except  that  of 
Christ,  is  disclaimed,  but  to  attain  to  it  contrition, 
faith  and  good  works  are  necessary. 

n.  (i.)  Images  are  valuable  as  representing  virtue 
and  good  example,  and  to  excite  devotion,  but  not  to 
be  unduly  honoured.  (2.)  The  saints,  being  in  heaven, 
ought  to  be  honoured,  "  but  not  with  that  confidence 
and  honour  which  is  due  only  unto  God."  (3.)  The 
holy  angels  and  saints  ought  to  be  prayed  to  in  order 
that  they  may  pray  for  us,  "  so  that  it  be  done  without 
any  vain  superstition ;"  and  holy  days,  in  memory  of 
Christ  and  His  saints,  are  to  be  observed.  (4.)  The 
rites  and  ceremonies  of  the  Church,  such  as  vest- 
ments, the  sprinkling  of  holy  water,  bearing  can- 
dles on  Candlemas  -  day,  sprinkling  ashes  on  Ash- 
Wednesday,  bearing  palms  on  Palm  Sunday,  and  set- 
ting up  the  holy  sepulchre  on  Good  Friday,  are  to  be 
observed.  (5.)  As  to  purgatory,  "  it  is  good  and  charit- 
able to  pray  for  souls  departed,  that  they  may  be  re- 
mitted part  of  their  pain ;  .  .  .  but  it  is  superstition  and 
folly  to  think  that  the  Pope's  pardon  can  help  them, 
or  that  Masses  can  deliver  them  from  their  pain."  In 
these  articles  four  out  of  the  seven  Sacraments  are  not 
named  ;  and,  says  Collier  ^  "  several  of  the  most  shock- 

K  ii.  128. 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME. 


301 


Ing  doctrines  of  the  Roman  communion  are  softened 
and  explained  to  a  more  inoffensive  sense,  and  several 
superstitious  usages  discarded." 

3.  In  1537  the  king,  having  been  requested  by  Con- 
vocation to  authorize  an  English  version  of  the  Bible, 
the  whole  Bible  known  as  Matthew's  Bible  (a  fictitious 
name,  which  the  author  assumed  from  fear  of  perse- 
cution), consisting  of  such  portions  as  had  been  trans- 
lated by  Tyndale  (the  remainder  being  supplied  from 
the  translation  of  Coverdale),  was  edited  by  John 
Rodgers,  who  was  afterwards  burnt  at  Smithfield  in 
the  reign  of  Mary.  A  royal  "  Injunction"  was  issued 
in  1 538,  ordering  the  clergy  to  provide  "  one  book  of 
the  whole  Bible  of  the  largest  volume,  in  English, 
and  the  same  set  up  in  some  convenient  place  within 
your  church,  whereas  your  parishioners  may  most 

commodiously  resort  to  the  same  and  read  it  

Item,  that  ye  discourage  no  man  privily  or  apertly 
from  the  reading  of  the  same  Bible,  but  shall  expressly 
provoke,  stir,  and  exhort  every  person  to  read  the 
same,  as  that  which  is  the  very  lively  Word  of  God, 
that  every  Christian  man  is  bound  to  embrace,  believe, 
and  follow,  if  he  look  to  be  saved  :  admonishing  them 
nevertheless  to  avoid  all  contention  and  altercation 
therein,  and  to  use  an  honest  sobriety  in  the  inqui- 
sition of  the  true  sense,  and  refer  the  explication  of 
obscure  places  to  men  of  higher  judgment  in  Scrip- 
ture." 

This  translation  of  the  Bible  was  received  with  the 
greatest  delight ;  people,  instead  of,  as  formerly,  being 
obliged  to  read  it  secretly  in  woods  and  retired  places, 
were  now  permitted  to  read  it  openly ;  those  who 
could  afford  it,  bought  the  Book  ;  sometimes  several 
neighbours  clubbed  together,  and  bought  it  in  com- 


302        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ER.\. 


mon  ;  many  aged  people  learnt  to  read,  in  order  that 
they  might  be  able  to  read  their  Bible  ;  the  Bible  be- 
came the  great  topic  of  the  day,  but,  it  must  be  added, 
frequently  also  one  of  angr}-  and  vehement  debated 

4.  In  1537,  a  committee  of  forty-six  divines,  com- 
prising all  the  bishops,  Gardiner  and  Bonner  being 
of  the  number,  was  appointed  to  draw  up  an  instruc- 
tion in  faith  and  morals,  the  result  of  which  was  "  The 
Pious  and  Godlv  Institution  of  a  Christian  Man," 
known  as  the  "  Bishops'  Book."'  It  contained  an  ex- 
planation of  the  Apostles'  Creed,  and  the  Scvoi  Sacra- 
ments (in  the  ten  Articles  only  three  Sacraments  were 
mentioned),  the  Holy  Eucharist,  Baptism,  and  Penance, 
being  the  most  necessary- ;  the  Ten  Commandments, 
the  Pater  Noster,  the  Ave  Maria,  and  the  doctrines 
of  Justification  and  Purgator)-.  The  corporal  Presence 
of  our  Lord  in  the  Sacrament  of  the  altar,  the  necessity 
of  confession  to  a  priest,  and  the  benefit  of  absolution, 
are  asserted.  A  definition  of  the  Church  is  given ; 
the  Church  of  E  norland  is  a  Catholic  Church,  and  the 
Roman  Church  has  no  exclusive  riorht  to  the  title ; 
the  king,  though  he  is  the  overlooker  of  bishops  and 
priests,  is  ••  not  to  teach  or  preach,  or  to  administer  the 
sacraments,  nor  to  absolve  or  to  excommunicate."  A 
distinction  is  drawn  between  the  Lord's  Day  and  the 
Jewish  Sabbath;  "the  Sabbath-day,  which  is  called 
Saturday,  is  not  now  prescribed  and  appointed  thereto 
(i.e.  a  spiritual  rest),  as  it  was  by  the  Jews,  but  instead 
of  the  Sabbath-day  succeedeth  the  Sunday,  and  many 
other  holydays  and  feastful  days  which  the  Church 
hath  ordained  from  time  to  time,  .  .  .  that  upon  those 
days  we  should  give  ourselves  wholly,  without  any 
impediment,  unto  holy  works." 

Str}-pe's  Craiuner,  p.  64. 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME. 


In  November,  1538,  a  proclamation  was  issued 
against  married  priests;  they  were  "not  to  minister 
any  sacrament  or  other  ministry  mystical,  nor  to  hold 
any  office  or  preferment,  but  to  be  utterly  expelled 
from  the  same,  and  held  as  lay-persons ;  and  such  as 
should  marry  after  this  to  be  imprisoned  during  his 
majesty's  pleasure." 

5.  In  1540  was  commenced,  but  not  finished  till 
1543,  a  similar  book  to  the  "  Bishops'  Book,"  but  with 
corrections  and  additions,  under  the  title  of  "  A  neces- 
sary Doctrine  and  Erudition  of  a  Christian  Man,"  or 
"  King's  Book,"  but  containing  the  doctrine  of  Tran- 
substantiation,  which  had  been  omitted  in  the  former 
book,  as  also  the  Concomitancy  of  the  Flesh  and 
Blood  in  the  Holy  Eucharist,  which  need  therefore 
only  be  received  in  one  kind.  The  preface  states  that 
it  was  "  set  forth  by  the  king  with  the  advyce  of  his 
clergy ;  the  Lords  both  spirituall  and  temporall,  with 
the  nether  House  of  Parliament,  having  both  sene  and 
liked  it  very  well." 

6.  On  May  5,  1539,  "the  king  being  most  de- 
sirous to  put  an  end  to  all  controversies  about  reli- 
gion, and  bring  his  subjects  to  a  uniform  belief,"  a 
committee  was  formed,  with  Crumwell  the  Vicegerent 
at  their  head,  consisting  of  the  two  Archbishops,  the 
Bishops  of  Durham,  Bath  and  Wells,  Ely,  Bangor, 
Carlisle,  and  Worcester,  "  to  finish  this  union  scheme 
with  all  expedition '  :"  but  the  opinions  of  Cranmer, 
Crumwell,  and  the  Bishops  of  Ely  and  Worcester 
being  so  different  from  the  others,  the  scheme  came 
to  nothing.  The  Duke  of  Norfolk  then  brought  six 
points  before  the  House  of  Lords,  which  were  de- 
bated for  three  days,  Cranmer  arguing  strongly  against 

'  Collier,  ii.  167. 


304       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


them,  the  king  being  present,  and  taking  part  in  the 
debates.  An  act  was  passed,  and,  as  stated  in  the  pre- 
amble, "  Six  Articles  were  debated  in  Convocation  as 
well  as  Parliament,  in  both  which  places  it  was  finally 
agreed  and  resolved  :" — In  these  Articles,  or  as  they 
were  commonly  called,  '  the  whip  with  six  cords ;' 
(i.)  Transubstantiation  is  asserted;  (2.)  Communion 
in  both  kinds  is  not  necessary  for  all  persons  by  the 
law  of  God ;  (3.)  Priests  are  forbidden  by  the  law  of 
God  to  marry ;  (4.)  Vows  of  chastity  made  to  God 
advisedly  by  man  or  woman  ought  to  be  observed ; 
(5.)  Private  Masses  are  agreeable  to  God's  law;  (6.) 
Auricular  Confession  is  to  be  retained  and  continued, 
used  and  frequented.  The  penalties  attached  to  the 
breach  of  those  articles  was  terribly  severe.  The  de- 
nial of  the  first  was  to  be  punished  by  burning,  and 
the  forfeiture  of  estates  :  offences  against  the  other 
five  were  to  be  punished,  in  the  first  instance,  by  for- 
feiture of  goods  and  estates,  and  imprisonment  during 
the  king's  pleasure ;  a  repetition,  by  death  as  felons  ^ 

As  to  the  manner  in  which  the  act  was  carried 
out  opinions  differ.  Some  hold  that  the  king  meant 
only  to  intimidate,  and  that  for  the  eight  years  in 
which  the  act  was  in  force  only  twenty-five  prose- 
cutions took  place  under  it.  Burnet,  on  the  contrary, 
asserts  that  five  hundred  persons  were  imprisoned  at 
one  time.  Fox  says  that  "  people  suffered  daily  ;"  so 
that  during  the  eight  years  there  must  have  been 
thousands  of  executions ;  tales  of  dreadful  cruelty  are 
related  as  having  been  inflicted  under  it ;  such  as  peo- 
ple braving  the  rack,  and  dying  by  inches  in  dun- 
geons, their  feet  in  the  stocks,  or  "  the  neck  and  legs 

The  punishment  against  clerical  matrimony  was,  however,  in  1540, 
changed  to  a  forfeiture  of  goods  and  estates. 


THE  BREACH   WITH   ROME.  305 

trussed  together  by  a  devilish  engine  which  contracted 
with  the  writhings  of  the  sufferer,  till  his  frame  was 
crushed  within  its  iron  grasp ' ;"  whilst  two  bishops, 
Latimer  and  Straxton,  were  under  it  deprived  of  their 
bishoprics  and  thrown  into  prison. 

7.  In  1543,  on  account  of  the  failure  of  the  harvest, 
the  bishops  were  enjoined  by  the  king  to  appoint  a 
Prayer  of  Procession  and  Litany,  to  entreat  God's 
mercy  on  the  land ;  and  in  the  following  year  an  order 
in  council  was  issued,  directing  the  archbishop  to  com- 
pose from  the  existing  Litanies  one  uniform  English 
Litany.  This  Litany  was  accordingly  drawn  up  by 
Cranmer,  and  receiving  the  approval  of  King  and 
Convocation,  was  issued  under  the  title,  "An  exhort- 
ation unto  prayer,  thought  meet  by  the  King's  Ma- 
jesty and  his  clergy  to  read  to  the  people  in  every 
church  after  processions.  Also  a  Litany,  with  suf- 
frages, to  be  said  or  sung  in  the  time  of  the  said  pro- 
cessions." This  Litany  is  almost  identical  with  that 
now  in  use  :  the  difference  is,  that  it  contained  pe- 
titions for  the  Prayers  of  Angels,  and  Archangels,  the 
Virgin  Mary,  Saints  and  Martyrs ;  and  also  the  words 
to  be  delivered  "from  the  tyranny  of  the  Church  of 
Rome,  and  all  its  abominable  enormities." 

In  1542  Convocation  had  decided  on  issuing  a  new 
edition  of  the  "  Sarum  Breviary."  It  was  also  or- 
dered, with  the  authority  of  Convocation,  that  "  every 
Sunday  and  holiday  throughout  the  year  the  curate 
of  every  parish  church,  after  the  Te  Deum  and  Mag- 
nificat, should  openly  read  to  the  people  one  chapter 
of  the  New  Testament  in  English,  without  exposi- 
tion ;  and  when  the  New  Testament  was  read  over, 
then  to  begin  with  the  Old."    This  was  the  first  step 

'  Professor  Blunt's  Reform, 
X 


306      THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


taken  towards  the  introduction  of  services  in  the 
vulo-ar  tongue. 

It  will  be  seen  that  some  important  changes,  such 
as  necessarily  arose  out  of  the  suppression  of  the 
papal  supremacy,  were  effected  under  Henry.  But 
the  reformation  in  his  reign  was  for  the  most  part 
either  political,  as  his  breach  with  Rome ;  or  personal, 
as  the  suppression  of  the  monasteries.  The  opinions 
of  Henry  and  Cranmer,  although  the  latter  did  not 
develope  till  the  next  reign,  were  radically  opposed. 
Cranmer,  in  opposition  to  Henry,  as  well  as  to  Gar- 
diner and  Tunstall,  would  have  reformed  the  Church 
after  the  model  of  the  Germanic  Reformation ;  Heath 
and  Fox  were  even  sent  as  ambassadors  to  Smalcald 

1535  ;  but  when  Luther  and  Melancthon  insisted  on 
the  Augsburg  Confession  as  the  basis  of  union,  Henry 
refused  to  make  any  change  in  doctrine,  and  so  the 
matter  came  to  nothing.  Henry  would  have  been 
well  satisfied  to  establish  an  Anglican  Church,  differ- 
ing from  the  Roman  on  the  point  of  the  supremacy 
alone.  That  to  the  end  he  was  a  firm  believer  in 
purgatory,  is  shewn  in  his  will,  by  which  he  left  a 
considerable  sum  of  money  to  the  monks  of  Windsor 
to  be  spent  in  Masses  for  his  soul.  His  great  object 
was  to  free  England  from  the  dominion  of  the  Pope, 
and  to  establish  his  own  supremacy ;  any  one  who 
opposed  him  must  suffer  for  it.  He  would  burn,  and 
he  actually  did  burn,  on  the  same  day  (July  30,  1540) 
six  people,  three  for  holding  the  doctrines  of  the  Re- 
formers, and  three  others,  priests  and  doctors  of  di- 
vinity, for  upholding  the  supremacy  of  the  Pope ; 
whilst,  to  shew  his  impartiality,  a  Romanist  and  a  Re- 
former were  bound  to  the  same  hurdle,  and  were  thus 
drawn  to  Smithfield. 


THE  BREACH  WITH  ROME. 


That  power,  rather  than  change  of  teaching,  was 
the  object  of  Henry,  is  clear  from  the  doctrines  which 
were  visited  with  punishment  during  this  reign. 

In  1527,  Bilney,  a  clergyman  of  Cambridge,  who 
is  said  to  have  converted  Latimer  to  his  views,  was 
burnt  at  Norwich,  for  preaching  that  Christ  was  the 
only  Mediator,  that  saint -worship,  pilgrimages,  and 
the  adoration  of  relics,  were  useless  and  idolatrous. 

Bainham,  a  lawyer  of  the  Middle  Temple,  was  ac- 
cused of  heresy,  and  sentenced  to  be  burnt,  but  re- 
canted. From  that  time  he  was  so  tortured  in  mind, 
that  he  soon  afterwards  declared  his  belief  in  those 
doctrines  which,  through  fear,  he  had  abjured,  and 
met  his  death  at  Smithfield  with  resignation,  holding 
Tyn dale's  translation  in  his  hand. 

The  body  of  William  Tracy  was  dug  up  and  burnt, 
because  in  his  will  he  had  committed  his  soul  to  Christ, 
without  mentioning  the  saints  or  purgatory. 

Robert  Barnes,  Prior  of  the  Augustines  at  Cam- 
bridge, and  John  Frith,  a  young  student  whom  Wol- 
sey  had  removed  to  his  college  at  Oxford,  wrote  in 
defence  of  Tyndale's  opinions.  The  Prior  abjured, 
and  was  compelled  to  "  carry  the  fagot."  Frith,  who 
had  also  written  against  the  corporal  Presence  and 
the  doctrine  of  purgatory was  burnt  at  Smithfield 
on  July  4,  1533;  a  young  man  named  Hewet  being 
tied  to  the  same  stake,  for  professing  belief  in  Frith's 
opinions. 

The  doctrine  of  purgatory  was  attacked  in  1528  in  a  widely-spread 
pamphlet,  called  the  "  Supplication  of  Beggars,"  written  abroad  by  Simon 
Fish,  a  gentleman  of  Gray's  Inn,  who  had  joined  Tyndale  in  Germany. 
He  satirized  the  mediaeval  doctrine  of  purgatory  as  the  source  of  all 
Roman  corruptions ;  and  was  answered  by  Sir  Thomas  More,  who,  in 
the  "  Supplication  of  Souls,"  defended  purgatory. 


X  2 


CHAPTER  II. 


ULTRA-REFORM.  EDWARD'  VI. 

"CD WARD  VI.  succeeded  his  father  on  January  28, 
^  1547,  at  the  age  of  nine  years  ;  and  by  his  father's 
will  was  placed  under  the  guardianship  of  sixteen 
councillors,  till  he  should  arrive  at  the  age  of  eigh- 
teen. Only  two  of  these  councillors,  Cranmer  and 
Tunstall  of  Durham,  w^ere  bishops  ;  Wriothesley,  Lord 
Chancellor,  who  was  one  of  them,  was  a  strong  anti- 
reformer  ;  the  name  of  Gardiner,  Bishop  of  Winches- 
ter, was  omitted  in  the  number.  The  will  of  the  late 
king  was  soon  set  aside ;  the  form  of  government 
which  he  had  appointed  was  turned  into  a  Protec- 
torate under  Lord  Hertford,  the  young  king's  uncle, 
soon  to  become  the  Lord  Protector  Somerset ;  the 
council  next  excluded  the  Bishop  of  Durham  and 
the  Lord  Chancellor,  and  thus  the  cause  of  ultra- 
reform  was  greatly  advanced  at  the  commencement 
of  the  new  reign. 

The  young  king  is  described  as  of  an  amiable  and 
gentle  disposition,  although  he  must  have  been  a  very 
precocious  youth  ^ ;  but  as  he  died  before  he  was  six- 
teen, it  is  evident  that  the  changes  in  religion  which 
were  introduced  in  his  reign,  were  due  to  his  guar- 
dians rather  than  himself,  who  for  their  own  interests 
took  care  to  provide  him  with  Puritan  advisers.  Two 

•  There  are  letters  in  the  British  Museum,  written  by  him  before  he 
was  nine  years  old,  in  French  and  Latin  ;  he  knew  Greek,  and  could 
translate  Aristotle  before  he  was  thirteen  ;  he  knew  Italian  and  Spanish, 
and  was  conversant  with  Logic,  Physic,  and  Music.  At  his  coronation 
three  swords  were  presented  to  him,  representing  the  three  kingdoms  ; 
whereupon  he  asked  for  the  fourth,  the  Bible,  the  "  sword  of  the  spirit." 


ULTRA-REFORM.  EDWARD  VI.  309 

worse  guardians  it  was  impossible  for  a  young  king 
to  have.  The  first,  the  Protector  Somerset,  was  bad 
enough;  but  after  his  execution  in  1552,  he  was  suc- 
ceeded by  a  man  more  unscrupulous  even  than  him- 
self, the  Duke  of  Northumberland,  son  of  that  Dudley 
who  was  executed  in  the  reign  of  the  late  king,  and 
father  to  the  husband  of  Lady  Jane  Grey.  North- 
umberland was  a  man  who  advocated  reform,  because 
he  thought  it  was  popular ;  but  when,  in  the  reign  of 
Mary,  he  was  sentenced  to  death,  he  declared  that  in 
heart  he  had  always  been  a  Romanist. 

At  the  accession  of  Edward  there  were  three  parties 
in  the  Church;  one  represented  by  Gardiner''  (with 
whom  was  the  future  Archbishop  Pole,  now  in  exile 
on  the  Continent),  who  understood  by  the  Reformation 
what  Henry  had  intended  it  to  be,  independence  of, 
but  not  antagonism  to,  Rome ;  and  who,  having  con- 
sented to  the  abolition  of  the  papal  supremacy,  thought 
the  Reformation  had  gone  far  enough.  The  second 
party  was  represented  by  Cranmer,  whose  sympathies 
went  with  the  German  Reformers ;  with  him  were  as- 
sociated Holgate,  Archbishop  of  York,  Holbeach  of 
Lincoln,  Goderic  of  Ely,  Latimer  of  Worcester,  and 
above  all,  Ridley,  first  of  Rochester,  and  afterwards 
of  London.  To  Cranmer  it  was  immaterial  whether 
the  government  of  the  Church  was  Episcopalian  or 
Presbyterian  ;  of  that  the  king  was  the  best  judge ; 
he  would  wish  to  brine  all  the  reformed  Churches 
into  one  communion,  each  preserving  its  own  disci- 
pline and  formularies ;  the  chief  thing  insisted  on  was 
complete  antagonism,  spiritual  as  well  as  temporal,  to 

So  difficult  was  it  to  find  competent  men  of  reforming  opinions,  that 
several  bishoprics,  Lincoln,  Worcester,  Chichester,  Hereford,  and  Bangor, 
were  obliged  to  be  held  "  in  commendam ;"  and  at  one  time  four  bishops, 
holding  anti-reform  views,  were  in  prison,  and  so  kept  out  of  the  way, 
Gardiner,  Bonner,  Heatlr  of  Worcester,  and  Day  of  Chichester. 


310       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

Rome ;  the  royal  supremacy  he  understood  to  mean 
that  the  government  of  the  Church  was  vested  not  in 
the  bishops,  but  the  civil  power,  the  king  being  the 
proper  judge  of  what  is  most  suited  for  the  spiritual 
life  of  his  people,  who  therefore,  as  it  belonged  to  him 
to  appoint  the  most  fitting  civil  governors,  was  also 
best  adapted  to  provide  for  ecclesiastical  offices.  A 
third,  or  a  more  advanced  section  of  the  second  party, 
was  in  favour  of  what  was  being  done  by  Zwingle 
and  Calvin  in  Switzerland,  and  may  be  identified 
with  the  Puritans,  of  whom  we  are  soon  to  hear  so 
much.  Of  this  party  Hooper  may  be  considered  as 
the  head ;  he  had  fled  from  the  kingdom  under  fear 
of  the  six  articles,  and  bringing  back  from  Switzer- 
land— where  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  Bullinger, 
Gualter,  and  Calvin — Calvinistic  ideas,  he  was,  in 
1550,  appointed  to  the  bishopric  of  Gloucester  by 
the  Protector  Somerset,  who  appointed  to  the  higher 
preferments  of  the  Church,  without  consulting  the 
Primate,  those  who  were  ready  to  carry  out  his  views 
of  reform.  He  refused,  however,  to  wear  the  epis- 
copal robes  at  his  consecration,  and  from  that  circum- 
stance arose  the  unhappy  strife,  so  calamitous  to  the 
Church,  which  was  destined  ultimately  to  overwhelm 
the  Church  and  Crown  in  a  common  ruin.  In  vain 
Bucer  and  Peter  Martyr,  who  held  posts  at  Cam- 
bridge and  Oxford,  attempted  to  overcome  the  scru- 
ples of  the  bishop  elect :  Cranmer  refused  to  conse- 
crate him ;  nothing  would  alter  his  determination,  so 
on  January  27,  1551,  he  was  committed  to  the  Fleet 
prison ;  he  at  last  consented,  and  was  consecrated  in 
the  proper  episcopal  robes on  March  8. 

'  The  episcopal  habits  were  much  grander  then  than  now,  consisting 
(besides  the  rochet  of  white  Hnen)  of  scarlet  silk,  instead  of  the  black 
satin  now  usually  worn,  to  which  the  lawn-sleeves  were  attached. 


ULTRA-REFORM. — EDWARD  VI. 


These  parties  may  be  called  respectively  the  anti- 
Reformers,  the  Reformers,  and  the  ultra- Reformers, 
to  the  last  class  of  which  Cranmer  later  on  gave,  at 
any  rate  an  apparent,  adherence. 

Over  and  above  these,  there  was  an  undisciplined 
host  of  Anabaptists  ^  and  other  sectarians,  dangerous 
not  only  as  religious  but  socialistic  revolutionists,  who 
were  ready  to  give  their  alliance  to  that  party  in  the 
Church  and  State  which  was  most  opposed  to  order ; 
these  men,  who  had  taken  their  rise  in  Germany, 
where  they  had  already  excited  a  rebellion,  deter- 
mined on  a  course  of  destruction  of  everything  which, 
if  it  did  not  exactly  square  with  their  own  ideas  of 
what  was  right,  they  branded  with  the  title  of  Roman, 
and  condemned  as  opposing  the  second  command- 
ment. In  vain  the  clergy  taught  them  that  there  was 
a  use  as  well  as  an  abuse  of  the  matters  they  con- 
demned ;  that  pictures  and  images  were  not  neces- 
sarily objects  of  worship ;  that  religious  feelings  may 
be  aroused  through  the  eye  as  well  as  through  the 
ear.  Without  waiting  for  any  authority,  these  people 
began  an  indiscriminate  destruction  of  images  and 
pictures ;  especially  was  their  wrath  excited  against 
the  holy-roods  or  crucifixes  over  the  chancel-screens 
in  churches,  which  they  everywhere  destroyed,  sub- 
stituting the  royal  arms  in  their  place. 

It  could  not  be  expected  that  such  a  man  as  the 
Protector  Somerset  would  be  much  shocked  at  the 
desecration  of  churches  ;  unfortunately  his  temper  and 
character  were  too  much  in  unison  with  the  Icono- 

Of  these  Anabaptists  there  were  two  classes,  one  opposed  to  infant 
baptism,  which  was  merely  a  doctrinal  error,  the  other  dangerous  fanatics, 
and  holding  opinions  subversive  of  all  civil  government.  It  is  this  last 
class  which  is  referred  to  in  Art.  xxxviii. 


312        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


clasts.  He  already  revelled  in  the  spoils  of  monas- 
teries. In  the  general  scramble  that  ensued  on  their 
spoliation,  he  had  contrived  to  procure  the  estates  of 
three  religious  houses ;  one  of  his  first  acts  as  Pro- 
tector was  to  appropriate  five  or  six  more,  amongst 
them  being  the  Abbey  of  Glastonbury,  where,  in  cer- 
tain tenements,  he  started  as  manufacturers  the  French 
and  Walloon  refurees.  Nor  was  he  averse  to  other 
kinds  of  Church  property ;  he  secured  to  himself  the 
revenues  of  a  deanery,  the  treasurership  of  a  cathedral, 
and  four  of  its  best  prebends.  To  make  room  for  the 
splendid  palace  which  he  built  on  the  site  of  the  pre- 
sent Somerset  House,  he  destroyed  the  parish  church 
of  St.  Mary-le-Strand ;  in  order  to  furnish  apartments 
for  his  servants,  the  town-houses  of  three  bishops  were 
pulled  down,  and  their  chapels  desecrated  ;  whilst  for 
his  pleasure-gardens  the  charnel-house  and  chapel  in 
St.  Paul's  churchyard  were  levelled,  the  bones  being 
utilized  as  manure  for  the  neighbouring  fields ;  whilst 
he  was  only  averted  by  gifts  of  money  from  the  de- 
struction of  Westminster  Abbey  ^. 

It  was  this  man  who,  under  pretence  of  religion, 
advocated  the  destruction  of  the  remaining  chantries, 
free  chapels  and  colleges,  for  which  an  act  had  been 
passed  in  the  preceding  reign,  but  which  had  escaped 
the  rapacity  of  Crumwell.  Somerset  had  a  double 
purpose  in  this ;  that  religion  had  nothing  to  do  with 
it,  as  he  pleaded,  need  scarcely  be  stated.  He  wanted 
first  of  all  a  share  in  the  spoils  himself ;  he  wanted 
also  to  please  the  courtiers,  and  to  buy  off  the  jealousy 
which  his  more  than  royal  splendour  had  excited. 

The  Commons  saw  through  the  device ;  so  did 
Cranmer,  and  both  the  Reforming  and  the  Romanist 

'  Hook,  vii.  221. 


ULTRA-REFORM.  EDWARD  VI. 


3^3 


bishops ;  even  Bucer,  in  his  honest  indignation,  ex- 
claimed, that  the  "  sinews  of  antichrist  were  the  church- 
robbers,  who  held  and  spoilt  parish  churches ;"  but  to 
no  avail  :  the  nobles  wanted  the  revenue  for  them- 
selves :  an  Act  of  Parliament  was  passed,  and  the  re- 
maining chantries  went,  as  the  monasteries  and  other 
chantries  had  gone  before  them.  All  the  chantries 
and  free  chapels  (the  schools  and  universities  being 
alone  excepted)  became  vested  nominally  in  the 
Crown,  but  really  passed  into  the  possession  of  the 
courtiers ;  only  a  small  sum  being  set  apart  for  the 
endowment  of  those  grammar-schools  which  are,  in 
the  present  day,  known  in  the  country  under  the 
name  of  Edward  the  Sixth's  schools. 

In  order  to  give  some  idea  of  the  state  of  Church 
parties  during  this  reign,  and  to  afford  an  insight  into 
the  character  of  the  man  who  took  upon  himself  the 
guardianship  of  the  Church,  we  have  somewhat  an- 
ticipated events,  and  must  now  return. 

The  first  ecclesiastical  act  of  the  reign  was  to  re- 
quire the  bishops  to  take  out  new  commissions  for 
the  discharge  of  their  duties ;  an  intimation  that  spi- 
ritual as  well  as  temporal  jurisdiction  emanated  from 
the  Crown.  It  is  difficult  to  acquit  Cranmer  of  being 
a  principal  cause  of  this  Erastian  arrangement ;  in 
fact,  he  is  said  himself  to  have  petitioned  for  the  new 
licence,  that  his  "  authority  terminating  with  the  late 
king's  life,  his  present  majesty  would  please  to  in- 
struct him  with  the  same  jurisdiction'."  In  the  first 
year  of  Edward's  reign,  Ridley,  one  of  Cranmer's 
chaplains,  was  appointed  Bishop  of  Rochester ;  during 
a  sojourn  of  three  years  on  the  Continent,  he  had  im- 
bibed much  of  the  spirit  of  the  foreign  Reformers ; 

'  Collier,  ii.  218. 


314       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


before  he  was  appointed  bishop,  he  had  preached 
a  dangerous  sermon  advocating  the  demoHtion  of 
images  ;  in  his  first  diocese  of  Rochester,  and  after- 
wards in  London,  he  was  a  strong  opponent  to,  and 
ordered  the  removal  of,  the  existing  altars  ;  and  hence- 
forward he  became  Cranmer's  strong  ally,  and  one  of 
the  most  prominent  advocates  of  the  Reformation. 

With  such  powerful  helpers,  the  Protector  proceed- 
ed to  his  work.  He  determined  to  institute  a  royal 
visitation  throughout  the  country.  The  whole  of  the 
kingdom  was  divided  into  six  circuits,  which  were  ap- 
portioned out  between  the  visitors,  for  whose  guid- 
ance Injunctions,  similar  to  some  issued  in  the  previous 
reign,  were  published ;  each  circuit  had  a  preacher, 
whose  business  it  was  to  bring  back  people  from  su- 
perstition, and  to  dispose  them  for  the  intended  altera- 
tions ^ :  to  make  the  impression  of  their  doctrine  more 
lasting,  the  preachers  were  to  leave  a  Book  of  Homi- 
lies, lately  composed,  for  the  future  guidance  of  the 
parish  priest  ^  The  archbishop  sent  his  mandate  by 
virtue  of  the  royal  letter,  suppressing  all  episcopal 
jurisdiction  and  all  preaching,  except  by  the  bishop 
in  his  cathedral,  and  clergymen  in  their  collegiate  or 
parish  churches. 

Our  space  will  only  allow  the  mention  of  a  few  of  the 
Injunctions  delivered  to  the  Commissioners  : — I.  The 

K  Collier,  ii.  221. 

This  was  the  First  Book  of  Homilies.  There  is  little  evidence  to 
shew  by  whom  they  were  written  ;  but  three,  at  least,  including  the 
Homily  of  Justification,  entitled  the  "Salvation  of  Mankind,"  to  which 
Gardiner  took  exception,  were  written  by  Cranmer  ;  that  on  Charity  was 
by  Bonner ;  the  eleventh  is  by  Becon,  one  of  Cranmer's  chaplains,  and 
it  appears  in  his  works :  other  authors  were  probably  Ridley,  Latimer, 
and  Hopkins.  But  the  book  was  put  forth  solely  on  the  authority  of 
Cranmer,  and  had  never  the  sanction  of  Convocation  or  Parliament, 


ULTRA- REFORM. — EDWARD  VI.  315 

clergy  were  to  preach  four  times  a-year  against  the 
pretended  supremacy  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome,  and  in 
favour  of  the  royal  supremacy.  III.  Images  that  have 
been  abused  with  pilgrimages  and  offerings  were  to 
be  taken  down  and  destroyed,  and  wax  candles  were 
not  to  be  burnt  before  images.  However,  two  tapers 
were  to  remain  still  on  the  high  altar  before  the  Sacra- 
ment, to  signify  that  Christ  is  the  very  Light  of  the 
world.  VII,  Within  three  months  the  Bible  of  the 
larger  volume  in  English,  and  within  twelve  months 
Erasmus's  "  Paraphrase  on  the  Gospel,"  were  to  be  con- 
veniently placed  in  the  Church  for  the  use  of  the  peo- 
ple. IX.  The  clergy  were  to  examine  people  coming 
to  confession  in  Lent,  whether  they  can  repeat  the 
Creed,  the  Lord's  Prayer,  and  Ten  Commandments, 
in  English ;  and  unless  they  could  do  so,  they  were 
not  to  be  admitted  to  the  Blessed  Sacrament  of  the 
altar.  XXI.  In  time  of  High  Mass,  the  Epistle  and 
Gospel  were  to  be  read  in  English,  and  one  chapter 
of  the  New  Testament  at  Matins,  and  of  the  Old  Tes- 
tament at  Evensong  after  the  Magnificat.  XXIII. 
No  processions  should  be  used  about  the  church  or 
churchyard;  but  immediately  before  the  High  Mass 
the  Litany  should  be  distinctly  said  or  sung  in  Eng- 
lish. None  were  to  go  out  of  church  without  just 
occasion,  and  no  bells  were  to  be  rung  except  one 
before  sermon.  XXVI 11.  All  shrines,  coverings  of 
shrines,  tables,  candlesticks,  trindels,  or  rolls  of  wax, 
paintings,  and  other  monuments  of  feigned  miracles, 
were  to  be  taken  away  and  destroyed.  XXXI.  In- 
cumbents guilty  of  simony  should  be  deprived  of  their 
livings,  and  made  incapable  of  holding  any  spiritual 
promotion ;  the  patron  who  sells  the  presentation,  or 
makes  profit  out  of  it  by  any  indirect  agreement, 


3l6        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


should  lose  his  title  for  that  turn,  and  the  living  lapse 
to  the  king. 

A  form  of  Bidding  Prayer  to  be  used  by  all  preach- 
ers, either  before  or  during  their  sermon,  was  pre- 
scribed by  the  visitors ;  the  concluding  part  of  which 
ran  thus  :  "  You  shall  pray  for  all  them  that  be  de- 
parted out  of  this  world  in  the  Faith  of  Christ,  that 
they  with  us,  and  we  with  them,  at  the  Day  of  Judg- 
ment, may  rest  both  body  and  soul  with  Abraham, 
Isaac,  and  Jacob,  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven." 

Armed  with  these  Injunctions  and  Homilies,  the 
visitors  proceeded  on  their  circuits  ;  they  met  with 
a  favourable  reception  from  the  clergy ;  two  prelates 
alone,  Gardiner  and  Bonner,  refused  to  receive  them, 
and  were  committed  to  the  Fleet ;  Bonner,  however, 
was  soon  liberated.  After  a  time  Gardiner  also  was 
liberated ;  but  on  his  refusing  to  proceed  further  in 
the  way  of  Reformation  than  Henry  VIII.  had  left  it, 
was  afterwards  committed  to  the  Tower,  where  he  re- 
mained a  State  prisoner  to  the  end  of  the  reign,  Poynet 
being  appointed  to  his  see  ;  Bonner  likewise  was  com- 
mitted to  the  Marshalsea  prison,  and  Ridley  was  pro- 
moted from  the  see  of  Rochester  to  that  of  London. 
The  Princess  Mary  also  protested  against  the  action 
of  the  visitors  as  disrespectful  to  her  late  father,  and 
injurious  to  her  young  brother,  who  had  not  arrived 
at  sufficient  years  to  judge  for  himself. 

Parliament  met  November  4,  1547,  and  was  con- 
tinued, by  prorogations,  during  the  whole  of  the  reign  ; 
and  the  next  day  Convocation  met.  The  first  busi- 
ness of  Parliament  was  to  repeal  all  penal  laws  against 
religion,  and  amongst  these  were  the  laws  against  the 
Lollards,  and  the  statute  of  the  six  articles.  Another 
act  transferred  the  election  of  bishops  from  the  Deans 


ULTRA- REFORM.— EDWARD  VI. 


and  Chapters  of  cathedrals  to  the  Crown.  In  the 
preamble  it  is  stated  that  "  the  said  elections  are  in 
very  deed  no  elections,  but  only  by  a  writ  of  conge 
d'elire,  have  colours,  shadows,  and  pretences  of  elec- 
tions ;  that  they  serve  to  no  purpose,  and  seem  de- 
rogatory and  prejudicial  to  the  king's  prerogative 
royal,  to  whom  appertains  the  collation  and  gift  of 
all  archbishoprics  and  bishoprics  and  suffragan  bishops 
within  his  highness  his  dominions.  It  is  therefore 
enacted  that  for  the  future  no  conge  d'elire  shall  be 
granted,  nor  any  election  be  made  by  the  Dean  and 
Chapter,  but  that  the  archbishopric  or  bishopric  shall 
be  conferred  by  the  king's  nomination  in  his  Letters 
Patents." 

The  proceedings  of  Convocation  were  of  the  great- 
est importance.  On  December  2,  a  proposition  made 
by  Cranmer  for  "  taking  the  Lord's  Body  in  both 
Kinds,"  was  approved  "  nullo  reclamante  :"  a  statute 
to  that  effect  was  enacted  by  Parliament,  and  ratified 
by  the  Crown,  as  being  more  agreeable  to  the  Primi- 
tive Church ;  but  the  statute  continued,  that  the  res- 
toration of  this  ancient  practice  was  not  to  be  consi- 
dered as  condemning  the  practice  of  any  Church  out- 
side his  majesty's  dominions. 

The  Lower  House  then,  through  their  prolocutor, 
the  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  presented  to  the  archbishop 
four  petitions  :  (i.)  That  the  committee  appointed  in 
the  previous  reign  for  reviewing  the  ecclesiastical 
laws  should  be  revived.  (2.)  That  the  clergy  of  the 
Lower  House  might  be  admitted  to  sit  in  Parliament 
with  the  House  of  Commons  according  to  ancient 
usage*.    (3.)  That,  as  a  committee  had  been  appointed 

'  Pro  nomtullis  urgentibus  caitsis  ,  .  .  si  fieri  potest  assumatur  et  co- 
optetur  in  inferiorem  domum  parliamenti.    They  insist  upon  the  clause 


3l8       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

in  the  last  reign  for  that  purpose,  the  Church  Services 
might  be  remodelled.  (4.)  That  some  consideration 
might  be  made  for  the  clergy  promoted  to  livings 
during  the  first  year  in  which  first-fruits  were  paid. 
The  first  petition  was  granted,  and  the  reformation 
of  the  ecclesiastical  laws  resumed.  In  the  second  pe- 
tition the  clergy  only  asked  to  be  restored  to  their 
ancient  privilege  of  sitting  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
and  now  that  they  were  prevented  by  the  Act  of  "  Sub- 
mission of  the  Clergy"  from  making  any  new  canons 
or  constitutions  without  the  king's  licence,  it  was  only 
just  that  they  should  be  consulted  in  any  measures  af- 
fecting their  body,  or  the  religion  of  the  land  ;  how- 
ever, to  this  petition  no  answer  was  given ;  the  fourth 
seems  to  have  been  overlooked.  But  the  third  peti- 
tion was  rendered  necessary,  by  the  change  which  had 
been  effected  with  regard  to  the  receiving  the  Holy 
Communion  in  both  kinds. 

A  committee  had  been  appointed  in  1542,  consist- 
ing of  the  Bishops  of  Salisbury  and  Ely,  and  six 
clergy  of  the  Lower  House  of  Convocation,  for  the 
purpose  of  revising  the  Mass-books,  Antiphoners,  and 
Portuises,  i.e.  Portiforia  or  Breviaries.  The  work  of 
the  committee  had  for  some  time  been  suspended  by 
the  statute  of  the  six  articles,  which  rendered  the 
work  dangerous.  But  now  that  that  act  was  repealed, 
the  committee  were  at  liberty  to  continue  their  labours  ; 
so  they  again  commenced,  with  others  added  to  their 
number,  to  complete  the  work  which  they  had  for  so 
many  years  had  in  hand.     The  committee  recom- 

of  Prcemunientes  in  the  king's  writ,  and  the  ancient  laws  and  customs 
of  the  kingdom.  If  this  request  was  denied,  they  desired  that  no  bills 
in  which  the  Christian  religion,  the  persons,  estates,  or  jurisdiction  of 
the  clergy  are  concerned,  may  pass  without  the  assent  of  the  clergy. 


ULTRA-REFORM.  EDWARD  VI. 


menced  their  sittings  at  Windsor  in  January,  1548, 
"having  respect  to  the  pure  religion  Christ  taught 
in  the  Scripture,  and  the  practice  of  the  Primitive 
Church." 

But  there  was  no  need  of  a  new  Prayer-Book. 
There  were  already  several  Prayer-Books  or  "  Uses" 
existing  in  English  dioceses,  such  as  the  Uses  of 
Sarum,  York,  Hereford,  and  Bangor.  Of  these,  the 
principal  and  the  most  generally  received  was  the 
"  Sarum  Use,"  which  St.  Osmond,  Bishop  of  Salis- 
bury, had  consolidated  from  the  various  Liturgies 
which  had  up  to  this  time  been  used  in  the  English 
Church.  This  Sarum  Prayer-Book  contained  the  fa- 
mous Portiforium,  or  Breviary  of  Sarum,  which  com- 
prised the  Daily  Services;  together  with  the  Sarum 
Missal,  or  Communion  Office  ;  and  probably  the  Sa- 
rum "  Manual,"  comprising  the  Baptismal  and  other 
"occasional"  offices.  These  ancient  formularies,  how- 
ever well  adapted  for  the  rule  and  continual  worship 
of  monastic  communities,  became,  after  the  suppres- 
sion of  the  monasteries,  unfitted  to  the  altered  cir- 
cumstances of  the  Church  of  England,  and  too  com- 
plicated for  parochial  congregations 

The  work  of  the  committee,  therefore,  was  confined 
to  comparing  the  existing  book  with  Scripture  and  the 
Primitive  Church ;  to  purging  out  mediaeval  accre- 
tions, and  making  the  book  better  adapted  to  the  pre- 
sent requirements  of  the  Church.  The  first  result  of 
their  labours  was  the  production,  on  March  8,  1548, 
of  an  English  "  Order  for  Communion,"  as  supple- 
mental to  the  Office  of  the  Mass,  which  was  directed 
to  come  in  use  at  Easter  (April  i).  But  this  work 
was  only  tentative ;  the  committee,  or  a  part  of  them, 

''  Blunt's  Annot.  Common  Prayer,  xix. 


320       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

continued  their  sittings  at  Windsor,  which  they  finished 
in  November  ;  on  the  24th  of  that  month  they  sub- 
mitted their  work  to  Convocation  ;  and  with  the  sanc- 
tion of  Convocation,  handed  to  the  king,  to  be  by  him 
laid  before  ParHament,  the  "  Book  of  Common  Prayer," 
the  first  Prayer-Book  of  King  Edward  VI.,  "the  no- 
blest monument  of  piety  and  learning  which  the  six- 
teenth century  had  produced  \"  This  book  was  sub- 
mitted to  the  House  of  Commons,  December  19,  1548, 
and  the  next  day  to  the  House  of  Lords,  in  order 
that  it  might  be  incorporated  into  an  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment (2nd  and  3rd  Edw.  VI.,  c.  i.).  The  act  (in- 
cluding the  Prayer-Book)  was  finally  returned  to  the 
House  of  Lords  from  the  House  of  Commons  on  Jan. 
22,  1549,  just  six  days  within  the  second  year  of  King 
Edward  VI.  This,  which  was  the  first  Act  of  Unifor- 
mity, and  pronounced  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer 
to  have  been  composed  "  under  the  influence  of  the 
Holy  Ghost,"  enacted  that  the  book  should  come  into 
general  use  on  the  Whitsunday  following ;  the  first  copy, 
however,  was  published  on  March  7,  and  the  clergy 
were  at  liberty  to  use  it  as  early  as  they  could  procure 
copies.  The  principal  difference  between  this  and 
"  the  Sarum  Use,"  was  the  compression  of  the  offices 
for  the  seven  hours  into  daily  Matins  and  Even- 
song™; the  reading  of  the  Psalter  through  once  a- 
month,  instead  of  once  a-week ;  the  selection  of  the 
Lessons  from  the  Bible  only ;  and  the  substitution  of 
the  English  for  the  Latin  language.  The  book  in  one 
sense  was  a  new  one,  but  it  was  in  substance  iden- 

'  Hardwick's  Reform.,  212. 

"  The  canonical  hours  were:  (i.)  Noctums,  Matins  or  Lauds,  a  night 
or  daybreak  service  ;  (2.)  Prime  at  6  a.m. ;  (3.)  Terce  at  9  ;  (4.)  Sexts  at 
noon  ;  (5.)  Nones  at  3  p.m. ;  (6.)  Vespers  at  6 ;  and  Compline,  the  last 
ser%'ice. 


ULTRA-REFORM.  EDWARD  VI. 


321 


tical  with  the  older  books,  the  Communion  Office 
being  an  adaptation  of  the  old  Missal  or  Mass,  and 
our  Matins  and  Evensong  that  of  the  Old  Breviary. 
"  The  great  majority  of  our  formularies  are  actually 
translated  from  Latin  and  Greek  Rituals,  which  have 
been  used  at  least  fourteen  or  fifteen  hundred  years 
in  the  Christian  Church ;  and  there  is  scarcely  a  por- 
tion of  our  Prayer- Book  which  cannot  in  some  way 
be  traced  to  ancient  offices"."  Cranmer  declared  it 
was  the  same  that  had  been  used  in  the  Church  for 
fifteen  hundred  years  :  if  here  and  there  new  elements 
are  detected,  they  are  traceable  to  the  reformed  Bre- 
viary, which  was  drawn  up  by  Cardinal  Quignon,  at 
the  command  of  Pope  Clement  VII.,  and  first  pub- 
lished in  1536;  in  fact,  a  considerable  portion  of  the 
preface  "  concerning  the  service  of  the  Church "  is 
taken  word  for  word,  and  is  a  mere  translation  from 
Latin  into  English  of  a  passage  in  Quignon's  Breviary. 

In  this  Prayer-Book  there  was  at  first  no  Ordinal 
included.  But  by  an  Act  of  Parliament  passed  in 
the  beginning  of  1550,  "six  prelates,  and  six  other 
men  learned  in  the  law,"  were  appointed  to  draw  up 
a  form  for  making  "  archbishops,  bishops,  priests,  dea- 
cons, and  other  ministers ;"  the  new  Ordinal  was  sub- 
mitted to  the  council  on  Eeb.  28,  signed  by  eleven 
of  the  commissioners.  Heath,  Bishop  of  Worcester, 
alone  refusing,  for  which  he  was  committed  to  the 
Fleet  prison. 

The  same  Parliament  that  passed  the  Act  of  Uni- 
formity, sanctioned  also  the  marriage  of  the  clergy. 
The  marriage  of  the  clergy  had  been  allowed  in  Con- 
vocation, after  much  opposition,  by  fifty-three  to  thirty- 
two  votes,  but  it  met  with  much  stronger  opposition 

, "  Palmer,  Orig.  Lit. 
Y 


322        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

in  Parliament ;  and  although  an  act  was  passed  which 
sanctioned  it,  the  preamble  sets  forth  that  "  it  is  to  be 
v/ished  the  clergy  would  live  single,  that  they  might  be 
more  at  leisure  to  attend  the  business  of  their  function." 

In  the  year  1548  was  published  Cranmer's  Cate- 
chism, entitled  "A  Short  Instruction  to  Christian  Re- 
ligion, for  the  singular  profit  of  Children  and  Young 
People."  It  was  probably  derived  from  Luther's  Ca- 
techism, and  drawn  up  at  first  in  German,  from  which 
language  it  was  translated  into  Latin  by  Justus  Jonas, 
and  from  Latin  into  English  perhaps  by  Rowland  Tay- 
lor, the  martyr,  who  was  one  of  Cranmer's  chaplains  ; 
the  part  borne  by  Cranmer  appears,  from  the  title,  to 
have  been  to  "oversee"  and  "correct  it."  This  Cate- 
chism, which  is  an  exposition  of  the  Ten  Command- 
ments arranged  after  the  Roman  usage,  and  which 
teaches  the  three  Sacraments  of  Baptism,  the  Holy 
Eucharist,  and  Penance,  must  not  be  confounded  with 
our  Church  Catechism ;  which  was  probably  drawn  up 
by  Dean  Nowell  (although  some  attribute  it  to  Poynet, 
Bishop  of  Winchester),  and  revised  by  Cranmer  and 
Ridley ;  the  latter  part,  concerning  the  Sacraments, 
was  not  added  until  long  afterwards,  by  Bishop  Overall 
in  the  reign  of  James  I. 

The  principle  of  the  English  Reformation  had  hi- 
therto been  mainly  Catholic,  and  totally  alien  from 
that  advocated  on  the  Continent.  The  First  Prayer- 
Book  of  Edward  VI.  had  been  drawn  up  without 
foreign  interference,  and  was  acceptable  to  a  large 
majority  both  of  clergy  and  laity.  At  the  same  time, 
everything  had  been  done  to  satisfy  the  ultra-Re- 
formers ;  images  had  been  removed,  and  in  many 
places  altars  had  been  destroyed.  But  a  small  sec- 
tion still  complained  of  several  things  which  remained, 


ULTRA-REFORM. — EDWARD  YI.  323 

especially  the  episcopal  vestments  ;  and  influenced  by 
the  Calvinistic  Reformers  of  the  Continent,  complained 
of  the  new  Service-book  as  nothing  short  of  the  Roman 
Missal  and  Breviary,  translated  into  the  English  lan- 
guage. Calvin  had,  in  1545,  published  at  Geneva  a 
Liturgy  of  his  own,  quite  different  to  the  English  Li- 
turgy, and  he  tried  to  bias  the  minds  of  Cranmer  and 
the  Protector  in  favour  of  his  own  views.  A  number 
of  distinguished  foreigners,  at  the  invitation  of  Cran- 
mer and  Somerset,  were  now  settled  in  the  country. 
Bucer  and  Fagius  had  been  appointed  to  Theological 
lectureships  at  Cambridge,  and  Peter  Martyr  to  the 
Regius  Professorship  of  Divinity  at  Oxford.  Another 
foreigner  residing  in  the  country  was  John  A.  Lasco, 
whose  great  praise  is  that  he  was  the  friend  of  Eras- 
mus ;  to  him  had  been  made  the  grant  of  the  Grey 
Friars  Church,  and  the  charge  of  all  the  foreign  com- 
munities in  London,  under  the  sanction  of  the  Bishop ; 
whilst  the  congregation  of  the  French  and  Walloons 
at  Glastonbury  was  committed  to  Pullain,  under  the 
immediate  tutelage  of  Somerset.  These  foreigners, 
who  did  not  understand  English,  and  knew  the  book 
only  through  imperfect  translations,  were  continually 
complaining  of  the  Prayer-Book,  and  plotting  for  its 
alteration. 

In  the  autumn  of  1549  the  Protector  Somerset  had 
been  committed  to  the  Tower,  and  the  new  Protector, 
the  Duke  of  Northumberland,  saw  that  it  was  to  his 
interest  to  favour  the  ultra- Reformers  ;  Tunstal,  Bishop 
of  Durham,  was  sent  to  the  Tower,  and  the  tempo- 
ralities of  his  see  were,  by  Act  of  Parliament,  made 
over  to  Northumberland ;  Cranmer,  who  was  too  cau- 
tious and  too  little  revolutionizing  to  suit  the  Protector, 
had  for  a  time  retired  from  his  usually  busy  life,  and 
so  Hooper  had  the  opportunity  of  instilling  his  prin- 

Y  2 


324       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

ciples  into  the  court,  and  especially  his  aversion  about 
the  ornaments  and  vestments  of  the  Church. 

The  young  king  (and  there  is  reason  to  believe  that 
Cranmer  after  a  time  joined  him)  was  led  by  these  in- 
fluences towards  a  further  review  of  the  Prayer-Book, 
but  the  revision  was  not  to  be  made  by  Convocation. 
In  the  Convocation  of  1550  the  matter  of  revision  was 
defeated  in  both  Houses,  and  there  was  a  general  un- 
willingness for  any  change.  The  king  threatened  to 
alter  the  Prayer-Book  on  his  own  authority ;  this  de- 
termination of  the  king's  probably  induced  Convocation 
to  delegate  its  authority  to  a  Royal  Commission,  com- 
posed chiefly  of  its  own  members,  although  there  are 
no  records  to  shew  for  certain  in  what  manner,  and  by 
whom,  this  second  revision  was  made. 

The  revision  commenced  in  the  autumn  of  1550. 
In  1552,  Parliament  met  on  January  23;  Convocation 
meeting,  as  usual,  on  the  following  day.  Edward's 
second  Act  of  Uniformity,  with  the  Second  Book  at- 
tached, passed  both  Houses  of  Parliament  on  April  6, 
with  a  proviso  that  it  was  to  come  into  use  on  the 
following  feast  of  All  Saints. 

The  difference  between  the  two  Prayer-Books  of 
King  Edward  VI.  is  at  once  apparent :  the  first  was 
thoroughly  Catholic  ;  in  fact,  it  was  little  more  than  an 
abridged  compilation  from  the  old  service-books ;  the 
second  book  was  a  great  advance  towards  ultra- 
reform,  and  sacrificed  much,  both  in  doctrine  and 
ritual,  which  the  Church  would  willingly  have  re- 
tained. The  Act  of  Uniformity  attached  to  the 
second  book  speaks  of  the  Prayer-Book  of  1 549, 
"  as  a  godly  order,  agreeable  to  the  Word  of  God 
and  the  primitive  Church,"  yet  that  "  because  divers 
doubts  and  disputes  had  arisen  as  to  the  way  in  which 
the  book  was  to  be  used  ....  rather  by  the  curiosity 


ULTRA-REFORM. — EDWARD  VI,  325 

of  the  minister  than  of  any  worthy  cause;"  therefore, 
the  present  book  was  now  put  forth. 

The  principal  changes  made  were  :  the  addition  of 
the  Sentences,  Exhortation,  Confession  and  Absolution 
at  the  beginning  of  the  Prayer- Book  ;  the  insertion  of 
the  Ten  Commandments  in  the  Communion  Office, 
which  thus  differs  from  every  primitive  Liturgy, 
and  is  a  peculiarity  of  the  English  Church  ;  the 
omission  of  certain  rites,  such  as  the  anointing  and 
use  of  the  chrism  and  trine  immersion  at  Baptism,  the 
unction  of  the  sick,  the  reserved  Sacrament,  Introits 
before  the  Collects,  prayer  for  departed  souls,  both 
in  the  Communion  and  that  for  the  Burial  of  the 
Dead ;  the  invocation  of  the  Holy  Ghost  at  the  con- 
secration of  the  Holy  Eucharist,  and  the  prayer  of 
oblation  which  followed  it;  and  the  rubric  which  or- 
dered the  mixing  of  water  with  wine.  Special  vest- 
ments for  the  Holy  Communion,  which  were  pre- 
scribed in  the  First  Book,  were  ordered  to  be  laid 
aside ;  the  Black  Rubric  added,  which  explains  kneel- 
ing at  the  Holy  Communion,  whilst  a  change  in  the 
words  of  delivery  was  also  made  :  a  revised  Ordinal 
was  also  appended  to  the  new  Prayer- Book. 

There  is  no  proof  that  the  Second  Prayer-Book  of 
King  Edward  VI.  ever  received  the  sanction  of  Con- 
vocation ;  nor  is  there  any  evidence  that  the  book 
even  came  into  general  use.  Three  editions  were 
printed ;  but  in  so  unsatisfactory  a  manner,  that  fur- 
ther publication  was  stopped  by  an  Order  of  Council 
on  Sept.  27,  1552;  nor  were  any  further  issues  of 
it  made.  The  probable  reason  for  its  suppression  was, 
the  thorough  dislike  with  which  it  was  received  both 
by  clergy  and  people.  Even  Cranmer  complains  of 
the  unquiet  spirits  which  demanded  the  unnecessary 
revision  :  "  which  can  like  nothing  but  that  is  after 


326       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

their  own  fancy ;  and  cease  not  to  make  trouble  when 
things  be  most  quiet  and  in  good  order.  If  such  men 
should  be  heard,  although  the  book  were  made  every 
year  anew,  yet  it  should  not  lack  faults  in  their 
opinion"." 

The  year  1552,  in  which  this  Second  Prayer-Book 
of  King  Edward  VI.  appeared,  witnessed  also  the 
publication  of  Forty-two  Articles  of  Religion.  The 
growth  of  the  reforming  party,  on  the  one  hand, 
which  advocated  extravagant  doctrines, — doctrines 
which  were  carried  still  further  by  the  violence  of 
the  Anabaptists  and  other  sectaries, — and  of  the  party 
headed  by  Gardiner  p,  on  the  other,  rendered  neces- 
sary some  authorized  confession  of  orthodoxy.  It  had 
long  been  a  favourite  idea  with  Cranmer,  in  which  he 
had  invited  Melancthon  to  assist  him,  to  draw  to- 
gether the  Continental  Protestants  of  different  schools 
into  communion  with  the  English  Church.  Henry  VI 1 1, 
had,  as  we  have  seen,  refused  the  proposal  of  an  al- 
liance made  to  him  by  the  foreign  Reformers.  But 
Edward  VI.  being  a  child,  and  thoroughly  under  the 
influence  of  his  guardians,  the  foreigners  entertain- 
ed strong  hopes  of  forming  an  English  alliance,  and 
making  Edward  the  head  of  a  Protestant  League ;  a 
plan  which  was  probably  only  frustrated  by  Edward's 
death.  Cranmer,  however,  by  the  king's  command, 
and  aided  by  Ridley,  taking  the  Lutheran  documents, 
especially  the  Confession  of  Faith  drawn  up  at  Augs- 

°  Blunt's  Annot.  Com.  Prayer,  xxxi. 

p  Gardiner  and  his  party  were  naturally  exasperated  at  the  treatment 
they  had  received.  At  the  end  of  the  reign,  six  bishops  of  that  party 
were  in  prison  :  Gardiner,  Bonner,  Day,  Tunstall,  Heath,  and  Ferrars  ; 
the  Crown  and  courtiers  were  enriching  themselves  with  the  property 
of  the  Church ;  and  even  the  more  zealous  of  the  bishops,  such  as  Rid- 
ley and  Hooper,  were  only  playing  into  the  hands  of  an  unscrupulous 
government. 


ULTRA-REFORM.  EDWARD  VI. 


burg  In  1530,  as  his  model,  compiled  Forty-two  Ar- 
ticles, and  committed  them  to  certain  bishops  for  their 
approval.  After  having  revised  and  amended  them, 
he  submitted  them  to  Sir  William  Cecil  and  Sir  John 
Cheke,  who  agreed  that  they  should  be  sent  to  the 
king.  After  this  had  been  done,  Cranmer  commu- 
nicated them  to  some  other  divines ;  and,  after  making 
his  last  remarks,  he  then  sent  them  to  the  Council  on 
November  24,  1552,  with  the  request  that  the  king 
would  authorize  the  bishops  and  clergy  to  subscribe 
them.  The  Council  kept  them  in  their  hands  till 
the  following  March,  and  ordered  them  to  be  circu- 
lated in  May ;  but  whether  they  received  the  sanction 
of  Convocation  is  uncertain ;  Dr.  Cardwell,  in  his 
Synodalia,  thinks  they  did and  it  appears  that  Con- 
vocation sat  that  year  from  March  19  to  April  i. 
The  Articles,  in  some  important  respects,  differ  from 
the  Thirty-nine  Articles  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  reign, 
they  did  not  contain  the  Article  on  the  Holy  Ghost, 
nor  the  twenty-ninth  and  thirtieth  Articles  on  the 
Lord's  Supper. 

Another  act  had  been  passed,  in  1 549,  for  the  re- 
formation of  the  canon  law,  but  again  failed,  as  before 
in  the  reign  of  Henry  VHI.  The  commissioners  had 
prepared  their  work,  and  were  ready  to  submit  it  to 
Convocation  and  Parliament,  when  Edward  died.  The 
matter  was  afterwards  revived  by  the  Puritans  in  the 
reign  of  Elizabeth,  but  the  queen  considered  that  it 
trenched  upon  her  supremacy.  Another  attempt  was 
made  in  vain  under  Charles  I. ;  so  all  attempts  of  the 
"  Reformatio  Legum  Ecclesiasticarum "  have  proved 
abortive. 

■»  Bishop  Harold  Brown's  39  Art. 


CHAPTER  III. 


THE  ROMANIST  REACTION.  MARY. 

T^HE  folly  of  religious  persecution  cannot  be  better 
exemplified  than  in  the  history  of  the  English 
Church  at  this  period.  Henry  persecuted  Romanists 
and  Protestants  alike  ;  Edward  persecuted  Romanists  ; 
Mary  persecuted  those  whom  Edward  favoured;  and  we 
shall  soon  find  Elizabeth  persecuting  Romanists  again. 
We  now-a-days  talk  about  the  "  bloody  reign  of  Queen 
Mary,"  and  so  it  was ;  so  also  were  the  reigns  of  her 
father,  her  brother,  and  her  sister.  Clarendon  says 
that  under  Henry  more  people  were  put  to  death  than 
under  Mary;  Henry  would  burn  as  traitors  alike  those 
who  were  guilty  of  heresy,  and  those  who  denied  his 
supremacy.  What  can  we  say  of  Cranmer's  share  in 
this  sanguinary  work  ?  Under  Henry  Cranmer  con- 
demned to  the  flames  those  who  denied  Transub- 
stantiation ;  in  the  reign  of  Edward  he  overcame  the 
boy-king's  aversion  to  persecution ;  against  his  better 
judgment,  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  and  an  appeal  to  the 
grey-headed  primate  that  he  would  be  responsible  for 
the  act  at  the  day  of  judgment,  Edward,  listening  to 
the  voice  of  Cranmer,  signed  the  death-warrant  of  the 
poor  fanatic,  Joan  of  Kent,  a  woman  who  was  more  fit 
for  a  lunatic  asylum  than  for  martyrdom.  Cranmer 
himself  was  always  wavering  in  his  faith ;  he  was 
first  a  Romanist,  then  a  mitigated  Romanist,  then 
a  Lutheran,  and  then  a  Calvinist ;  so  many  deaths, 
therefore,  according  to  his  own  theory  of  intolerance, 
ought  he  to  have  suffered. 

It  is  from  no  wish  to  disparage  Cranmer's  memory, 


THE  ROMANIST  REACTION.- — MARY. 


or  to  excuse  Mary's  conduct,  that  these  remarks  are 
made ;  her  woman's  nature  ought  to  have  been  averse 
to  cruelties  which  have  excited  the  horror  of  Roman 
Catholic  historians ;  but  truth  compels  the  confession 
that  others,  and  with  less  excuse,  are  equally,  or  only 
in  a  less  degree,  guilty  with  Mary.  Mary,  it  must  be 
remembered,  had  been  herself  persecuted  for  her  re- 
ligion. She  had  keenly  felt  the  unjust  treatment  in- 
flicted on  her  mother ;  Edward  had,  in  his  will,  left  the 
throne  to  the  Lady  Jane  Grey;  and  at  the  beginning 
of  her  reign  a  conspiracy  had  been  organised,  and 
that  supported  by  no  less  a  person  than  the  primate, 
to  set  aside  her  undoubted  right  to  the  Crown.  In 
the  present  day  a  different  kind  of  religious  persecu- 
tion is  in  vogue ;  the  fires  of  Smithfield  are  out  of 
date  :  but  we  must  carry  ourselves  back  to  the  times 
and  circumstances  of  Mary's  reign,  when  no  notion 
of  religious  toleration  existed,  when  she  only  carried 
out  the  sanguinary  system  of  her  predecessors.  Mary 
was  a  bigot ;  but  she  was  sincere ;  she  believed,  ac- 
cording to  the  principles  of  the  Church  in  which  she 
had  been  brought  up,  that  she  was  inculcating  the 
cause  of  truth ;  heresy  with  her  was  a  deadly  sin  ; 
the  punishment  of  heresy  was  death,  so  heretics  must 
be  burnt ;  and  if  she  burnt  their  bodies,  it  was  to 
save  their  souls,  that  through  a  short  suffering  in  this 
world,  they  might  be  saved  from  eternal  suffering  in 
the  next. 

The  bishops  who  had  been  deprived  were  at  once 
reinstated  in  their  sees  :  Gardiner  was  made  Lord 
Chancellor,  and  as  long  as  he  was  her  adviser,  Mary 
proceeded  cautiously :  she  still  retained  the  title  of 
"  Head  of  the  Church,"  and  promised  that  she  would 
force  no  man's  conscience.    Gardiner  thoroughly  un- 


330       THE  CHURCH   OF  THE   REFORMATION  ERA. 


derstood  the  wishes  of  the  country ;  he  saw  that  the 
ultra- Reformation  under  Edward  had  left  the  mass, 
both  of  clergy  and  laity,  unaltered  in  their  attachment 
to  the  ancient  faith,  but  that  there  was  also  a  strong 
opposition  to  the  supremacy  of  the  Pope ;  he  himself 
had  thoroughly  acquiesced  in  its  abolition ;  he  wished 
now,  without  alarming  the  prejudices  of  the  country, 
to  restore  the  religious  system  as  it  had  existed  at 
Henry's  death,  and  thus  by  degrees  to  effect  a  re- 
conciliation with  Rome.  Had  Gardiner's  advice  been 
acted  upon  ;  had  a  moderate,  instead  of  a  rash  and 
cruel,  policy  been  adopted ;  had  Mary  listened  to 
wiser  counsellors  than  the  Pope,  and  the  numerous 
Spaniards  who  held  office  in  the  court ;  it  is  more 
than  probable  that  all  the  work  of  the  two  previous 
reigns  would  have  been  undone ;  a  lasting  impression 
have  been  made  upon  the  Church,  and  the  papacy 
permanently  established  in  England.  As  it  is,  just 
as  England  was  being  recovered  to  Rome,  the  fires 
of  Smithfield  broke  out,  and  so  England  was  lost  to 
Rome  for  ever. 

The  character  of  Gardiner  is  much  misunderstood, 
and  in  the  minds  of  many  people  is  associated,  with 
that  of  Bonner,  in  the  cruelties  of  this  reign.  No 
mistake  could  be  greater.  Gardiner  probably  was  not 
averse  to  the  burning  of  a  heretic  (few  people  in  those 
days  were),  least  of  all  Cranmer.  Gardiner  had  man- 
fully withstood  the  ultra-reforming  spirit  of  the  late 
reign,  which  Cranmer  had  so  greatly  encouraged.  He 
had  himself  been  persecuted  ;  but  how  did  he  behave 
when  he  was  restored  to  power  His  bitterest  enemy 
had  been  the  Duke  of  Northumberland  ;  yet  when 
the  duke  was  a  prisoner  in  the  Tower,  he  visited 
him,  and  pleaded  for  his  life.    No  one  could  have  op- 


THE  ROMANIST  REACTION.  MARY. 


posed  him  more  than  did  Peter  Martyr ;  yet,  when 
it  was  proposed  that  the  Reformer  should  be  called 
upon  to  answer  for  his  conduct,  Gardiner,  at  that  time 
Lord  Chancellor,  not  only  exerted  his  influence  in  his 
favour,  but  supplied  him  with  the  means  of  departing 
from  the  country.  Cranmer,  a  comparatively  unknown 
man,  had  been  appointed  over  his  head  to  the  pri- 
macy ;  through  Cranmer  he  had  been  committed  to 
prison  under  Edward  VI. ;  yet  to  him  on  one  occa- 
sion Cranmer  owed  his  liberty,  and  to  the  last  Gar- 
diner did  all  in  his  power  to  save  him. 

A  very  different  man  from  Gardiner  was  Bonner, 
"  vulgar  and  coarse-minded,  and  one  who  is  best  de- 
scribed as  a  bully  ^ ;"  yet  he  probably  was  not  as  bad 
as  he  has  been  painted.  A  royal  circular  of  Ma}-, 
1555,  complains  of  the  bishops  generally  (and  amongst 
them  Bonner  must  have  been  included),  for  not  using 
greater  strictness  in  extirpating  heresy ;  but  Bonner 
was  a  bishop,  and  therefore  the  Puritans  delighted  to 
fasten  on  him  the  murders  of  which  Mary  herself  was 
the  chief  cause.  The  queen's  counsellors,  although 
they  had  changed  themselves,  were  always  ready  to 
do  as  the  queen  wished,  and  never  counselled  mercy ; 
what  rendered  Bonner's  memory  particularly  odious, 
were  the  coarse  and  vulgar  personalities  with  which 
he  vented  his  angry  passions  on  the  unhappy  heretics 
who  were  brought  before  him  as  judge. 

The  first  Parliament  of  the  reign  met  October  5, 
1553'  four  days  after  the  queen's  coronation,  and  was 
opened  with  High  Mass  in  Latin.  The  first  steps 
taken  were  to  confirm  the  marriage  of  Henry  and 
Katharine,  and  thus  legalize  Mary's  birth ;  and  to 
restore  the  freedom  of  Convocation,  of  which  it  had 

"  Hook's  Lives,  vii.  309. 


332       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


been  deprived  by  Henry.  Accordingly,  Convocation 
met  without  the  royal  licence,  and  the  Lower  House 
elected  Weston,  Dean  of  Westminster,  as  prolocutor. 
By  one  Act  of  Parliament,  the  two  Acts  of  Unifor- 
mity, the  marriage  of  the  clergy  ^  and  other  statutes 
made  under  Edward,  were  abolished,  and  the  services 
of  the  Church  restored  to  their  condition  in  the  last 
year  of  Henry  VHI.  When  the  prolocutor  proposed 
to  the  Lower  House  of  Convocation  the  repeal  of  the 
acts  legalizing  the  Service-book  of  King  Edward,  only 
six  members  were  found  to  oppose  it.  In  the  Upper 
House  it  was  resolved  to  maintain  the  doctrine  of 
Transubstantiation,  to  restore  Communion  in  one  kind, 
and  the  elevation  and  reservation  of  the  Host.  It 
could  not  be  to  a  love  of  the  new  queen  that  this 
change  of  feeling  was  attributable.  Mary  was  disliked 
almost  as  much  as  from  her  childhood  she  had  hated 
the  English  nation,  all  her  sympathy  from  which  she 
had  transferred  to  her  mother's  country.  It  is  true 
that  several  bishops  were  either  imprisoned  or  de- 
posed ;  that  many  of  the  clergy  had  been  compelled 
to  seek  refuge  and  security  in  Switzerland  and  Ger- 
many ;  yet  this  cannot  account  for  the  general  apathy 
that  existed,  or  the  readiness  with  which  not  only  Par- 
liament, but  Convocation  also,  repudiated  the  Refor- 
mation ;  it  shews  that  when  the  glaring  exactions  and 
usurpations  of  Rome  had  been  abolished,  the  thought- 
ful people  were  opposed  to  the  sweeping  changes  of 
the  former  reign ;  that  a  dislike  of  the  whole  work 
of  Reformation  set  in,  and  a  reaction  occurred  amongst 
the  community  at  large. 

But  moderate  counsels  were  not  long  followed  by 

Against  the  married  clergy  the  queen  was  very  severe  in  the  "  In- 
junctions" which,  in  imitation  of  her  predecessors,  she  issued  in  1554. 


THE  ROMANIST  REACTION. — MARY. 


333 


Mary,  and  the  end  of  Gardiner's  supremacy  was  at 
hand.  On  November  of  1 554,  the  year  of  the  queen's 
marriage  with  PhiHp  of  Spain,  Cardinal  Pole,  whose 
attainder  had  been  removed  by  an  Act  of  Parliament, 
after  an  absence  of  twenty  years,  arrived  in  England 
as  the  Pope's  legate,  for  the  purpose  of  reconciling 
England  with  the  Holy  See;  and  on  November  28, 
after  but  a  slight  opposition  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
the  acts  against  the  Pope's  supremacy  were  repealed 
in  both  Houses  of  Parliament,  and  the  same  decision 
was  arrived  at  in  Convocation.  On  St.  Andrew's  day, 
after  High  Mass  in  Westminster  Abbey,  the  lords  and 
ladies  assembled  in  Whitehall,  and  there,  in  the  pre- 
sence of  the  queen  and  her  husband,  kneeling  on  their 
knees,  they  received  absolution  from  the  cardinal ; 
the  nation  was  thus  received  back  into  communion 
with  Rome ;  the  Act  was  ratified  by  the  new  Pope, 
Paul  IV.,  and  on  the  feast  of  the  Conversion  of 
St.  Paul,  a  solemn  procession  was  made  to  St.  Paul's, 
to  return  thanks  for  the  reconciliation  of  the  kingdom 
with  the  papal  see. 

And  now  the  work  of  the  counter- reformation  went 
on  apace.  All  the  married  clergy  were  ejected  from 
their  livings  ^  The  statutes  against  heresy  were  re- 
vived. Great  numbers  of  Englishmen,  from  all  ranks 
of  society,  fled  the  kingdom,  although  conflicting  opi- 
nions render  it  impossible  to  state  the  number'^.  Seve- 

'  It  is  difficult  to  compute  the  numbers  ejected  on  this  ground.  Some 
place  it  as  high  as  three-fourths  of  the  whole  clergy.  In  the  diocese  of 
Canterbury,  it  is  known  that  out  of  three  hundred  and  eighty,  rather 
more  than  seventy  -were  ejected  ;  if  this  can  be  taken  as  an  average,  it 
may  be  computed  at  about  one-fifth  of  the  whole  clergy. 

Heylin  says  eight  hundred.  Massingberd,  in  his  "  Reformation," 
relying  on  untrustworthy  information,  speaks  of  thirty  thousand  suffering 
exile,  and  of  three  hundred  being  burnt. 


334       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


ral  bishops,  Coverdale,  Barlow,  Scory^,  Poynet,  and 
Bale,  together  with  other  dignitaries  and  clergymen 
who  afterwards  became  distinguished  in  the  Church, 
Jewel,  Nowel,  Pilkington,  Fox,  Humphrey,  and  Whit- 
tingham,  being  in  the  number. 

Of  those  who  remained  at  home,  many  by  the  vio- 
lence of  their  fanaticism,  and  the  disloyalty  of  their 
language,  as  well  as  their  ridicule  of  the  superstition 
of  the  Roman  Church,  succeeded  in  provoking  the 
naturally  amiable  temper  of  Pole,  and  the  vindictive 
susceptibilities  of  the  queen ;  whilst  an  insurrection, 
headed  by  Sir  Walter  Carew  in  the  west  of  England, 
and  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  in  Kent,  which  was  owing 
rather  to  a  dislike  of  the  Spanish  connexion,  than  any 
religious  enthusiasm,  seemed  to  threaten  the  security 
of  the  queen.  These  causes  may  explain,  although 
they  do  not  palliate,  the  cruel  executions  of  the  next 
four  years. 

Pole,  who  had  before  been  an  advocate  on  the  side 
of  mercy,  now  adopted  a  sure  plan  for  discovering  the 
antagonists  of  the  new  religion.  He  ordered  a  book 
to  be  kept  by  the  bishops  of  those  who  had  become 
reconciled  to  Rome.  In  this  manner,  those  that  re- 
sisted were  discovered  ;  and  as  many  as  two  hundred 
and  eighty  persons  were  through  this  means  put  to 
death,  for  no  other  reason  than  that  they  remained 
faithful  to  their  religion,  and  to  the  vows  which  they 
had  taken  in  the  former  reign.  Rodgers,  one  of  those 
who  had  helped  Tyndale  in  translating  the  Bible,  was 
burnt  at  Smithfield  in  the  presence  of  his  children, 
who  stood  by  and  encouraged  him ;  Hooper  in  front 
of  his  own  cathedral  at  Gloucester,  Saunders  at  Co- 

'  Scory  was  the  only  bishop  that  recanted,  and  he  received  absolution 
from  Bonner. 


THE  ROMANIST  REACTION.  MARY. 


335 


ventry,  and  Rowland  Taylor  in  his  own  parish  at 
Hadley,  all  four  married  men.  A  month  afterwards, 
Farrer,  Bishop  of  St.  David's,  was  burnt ;  Coverdale, 
Bishop  of  Exeter,  through  the  mediation  of  the  King 
of  Denmark,  escaped,  and  left  the  country.  Cranmer, 
Latimer,  and  Ridley,  and  with  them  Bradford,  were 
confined  in  the  same  apartment  in  the  Tower ;  but 
the  three  first  were  afterwards  removed  to  Oxford, 
where  they  were  imprisoned  separately,  Ridley  and 
Latimer  in  the  houses  of  private  individuals  in  the 
Corn-market,  and  Cranmer  in  the  common  prison 
called  Bocardo. 

The  place  selected  for  the  execution  of  Latimer  and 
Ridley  was  a  ditch  outside  the  city,  in  front  of  Balliol, 
of  which  Brooks,  Bishop  of  Gloucester — who,  acting 
as  the  Pope's  commissioner,  had  condemned  them  to 
death — was  master;  and  here,  on  Oct.  i6,  1555,  they 
met  their  death  manfully  ;  the  last  words  of  Latimer 
being,  when  a  lighted  faggot  was  being  laid  at  Ridley's 
feet,  "  Be  of  good  comfort.  Master  Ridley,  we  shall 
this  day  light  such  a  candle,  by  God's  grace,  in  Eng- 
land, as  I  trust  shall  never  be  put  out." 

Meanwhile,  strong  interest  was  being  made  on  be- 
half of  Cranmer ;  even  Cardinal  Pole  interceded  for 
him  with  the  queen.  Hopes,  and  not  without  reason, 
were  entertained  of  his  joining  the  Church  of  Rome. 
From  the  time  that  from  his  prison-window  he  had 
witnessed  the  burning  of  Ridley  and  Latimer,  his  con- 
stancy failed  him.  At  one  time  he  signed  an  ab- 
ject declaration,  submitting  himself  to  the  queen,  and 
acknowledging  the  Pope's  supremacy ;  but  as  he 
did  not  retract  his  religious  opinions,  this  was  not 
enough.  At  another  time,  he  appealed  to  a  general 
council,  called  together  in  the  Holy  Ghost,  as  superior 


336       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


to  the  Pope ;  but  here  again  he  wavered,  for  in  defend- 
ing himself  he  spoke  of  the  Pope's  usurped  authority. 
This  was  considered  a  proof  of  his  insincerity  :  Pole 
could  no  longer  intercede  for  him  ;  and  his  enemies 
determined  to  proceed  to  extremities.  Cranmer  still 
clung  to  the  hopes  of  life.  A  month  passed  by,  in  the 
expectation  that  he  might  be  induced  to  recant :  he  was 
removed  to  the  lodgings  of  the  Dean  of  Christ  Church  ; 
and  here,  being  treated  with  great  kindness,  he  made 
a  full  and  thorough  recantation,  under  the  hope,  as  he 
himself  said,  that  his  life  might  be  spared.  It  was, 
however,  in  vain.  On  the  21st  March,  being  ap- 
prised of  his  doom,  in  a  layman's  dress  (for,  like 
the  other  bishops,  he  was  first  degraded),  he  was 
brought  into  St.  Mary's  Church,  and  there  he  was  called 
upon  for  a  public  expression  of  faith,  that  all  might 
know  he  was  a  Catholic.  Standing  on  a  raised  plat- 
form in  front  of  the  pulpit,  he  first  read  a  prayer ;  then 
kneeling  (the  people  also  kneeling,  and  joining  with 
him),  he  repeated  the  Lord's  Prayer.  Having  re- 
cited the  Apostles'  Creed,  and  declaring  his  belief  in 
the  faith  of  the  Catholic  Church,  he  said  he  came  to 
the  matter  which  troubled  him  more  than  anything  in 
his  life.  He  was  now  expected  to  read  a  confession 
drawn  up  for  him  by  Bonner.  Instead  of  this,  he  con- 
fessed that  the  papers  he  had  signed,  and  for  which  he 
grieved  so  much,  were  written  under  fear  of  death  ; 
and  "  forasmuch  as  my  hand  offended,  writing  contrary 
to  my  heart,  my  hand  shall  first  be  punished  there- 
fore, for  when  I  come  to  the  fire  it  shall  first  be  burnt. 
And  as  for  the  Pope,  I  refuse  him  as  Christ's  enemy 
and  Antichrist,  and  all  his  false  doctrines."  He  spoke 
a  few  sentences  more,  but  his  voice  was  drowned  with 
hootin^s,  and  he  was  hurried  off  to  the  spot  where 


THE  ROMANIST  REACTION.  MARY.  337 


his  brother  bishops  had  lately  made  so  good  a  con- 
fession;  and  there,  on  March  21,  1556,  when  the  fire 
was  lighted,  resuming  all  his  fortitude,  he  thrust  his 
right  hand  into  the  flame  \  and  held  it  there  without 
flinching,  exclaiming,  "This  unworthy  right  hand;" 
and  with  his  last  breath,  "  Lord  Jesus,  receive  My 
spirit." 

No  one  will  reproach  Cranmer  that  he  had  not  the 
gift  of  fortitude;  but  not  having  that  gift  himself, 
he  will  always  be  blamed  for  want  of  feeling,  and 
committing  others  to  a  cruel  and  untimely  death. 
But  truth  compels  one  to  confess  that  in  no  sense 
is  he  entitled  to  the  appellation  of  martyr.  A  martyr 
is  one  that  dies  willinglyy  rather  than  renounce  his 
opinions.  Cranmer  both  renounced  his  opinions,  and 
died  unwillingly:  he  renounced  his  opinions  more  than 
once,  and  although  it  is  unjust  to  reflect  upon  him  that 
he  might  have  done  the  same  again  to  save  his  life,  it 
is  nothing  to  say  he  recanted  his  recantation  when  his 
life  was  forfeited.  He  only  did  what  others  do  when 
they  are  at  the  point  of  death,  and  all  hope  of  pardon 
in  this  life  is  excluded. 

On  the  next  day.  Cardinal  Pole  was  consecrated  as' 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  but  he  did  not  enjoy  his 
honour  long.  Pole  certainly  understood  the  English 
temperament,  and  shewed  his  sympathy  for  the  people 
by  ordering  the  New  Testament  to  be  translated  into 
English.  He  had  not  an  easy  part  to  play  :  he  was 
the  personal  enemy  of  the  new  Pope,  Paul  IV.,  against 
whom  he  had  been  put  in  competition  for  the  papacy ; 
he  was  suspected  at  Rome  of  Lutheran  tendencies, 

'  Voltaire  compares  this  act  to  a  similar  one  by  Mutius  Scaevola,  cha- 
racterizing that  of  Cranmer  as  the  most  magnanimous  of  the  two. 

Z 


r^^S       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

and  his  advocacy  of  the  translation  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment probably  increased  the  ill-feeling  against  him. 

The  Pope  revoked  his  legatine  commission,  and 
summoned  him  to  attend  at  Rome ;  but  the  queen 
shewed  she  had  a  will  as  strong  as  her  father's ;  she 
would  not  allow  him  to  go  to  Rome,  and  Pole  was 
reinstated  in  his  office  of  legate.  He  died  on  Nov.  i8, 
1558.  Mary,  worn  out  by  trouble;  hated,  as  she  felt 
she  was,  by  her  subjects  ;  feeling  that  the  Roman  creed 
in  England  would  die  with  her;  neglected  by  her  hus- 
band, whom  she  greatly  loved ;  involved  in  a  quarrel 
with  the  Pope ;  in  addition  to  all,  overwhelmed  with 
grief  at  the  loss  of  Calais,  died  only  a  few  hours  be- 
fore the  primate,  on  Nov.  1 7. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


THE  ROMAN  SCHISM,  AND  THE  RISE  OF 
PURITANISM.  ELIZABETH. 

CO  great  was  the  indignation  felt  in  England  at  the 
^  persecution  of  the  bishops  and  others ;  so  great 
the  national  shame  for  the  loss  of  Calais,  and  the  de- 
gradation to  which  the  country  had  fallen  through  an 
unnecessary  and  disastrous  war ;  so  financially  ruined 
had  it  become  through  the  raising  of  subsidies,  and  the 
constant  draining  of  money  from  England  to  Spain  ; 
that  people  of  all  classes,  the  Romanist  clergy  alone 
excepted,  overlooked  their  theological  differences,  and 
hailed  with  joy  the  accession  of  Elizabeth.  During  the 
reigns  of  Henry  and  Edward,  owing  to  the  tyrannical 
character  of  the  former,  and  the  ultra-reforming  spirit 
of  the  counsellors  of  the  latter,  no  great  national  zeal 
had  been  manifested  in  the  cause  of  the  Reformation  ; 
but  when  it  came  before  the  nation  recommended  by 
the  blood  of  martyrs,  as  in  the  reign  of  Mary,  then  it 
was  regarded  with  favour  both  in  a  religious  light  and 
in  the  cause  of  liberty. 

As  the  see  of  Canterbury  was  vacant,  the  duty  of 
officiating  at  the  coronation  of  the  queen  fell  on  Heath, 
the  Archbishop  of  York  ;  but  as  he  refused,  the  cere- 
mony was  performed  by  Dr.  Owen  Oglethorpe,  Bishop 
of  Carlisle,  according  to  the  old  formulary,  which  has 
existed  from  the  earliest  period  of  our  history,  and 
which,  though  altered  and  adapted  to  suit  the  circum- 
stances of  each  reign,  was  substantially  the  same  as 
that  which  is  used  now  * :  the  "  knights  and  lords, 

*  Hook's  Lives,  ix.  151,  is  conclusive  on  this  point. 
Z  2 


340 


THE  ROMAN  SCHISM, 


heralds  of  arms  in  their  rich  coats,  then  the  nobles, 
and  all  the  bishops  in  scarlet,"  being  present 

The  queen  acted  cautiously,  but  firmly,  hoping  thus 
to  unite  the  discordant  elements  of  the  nation.  She 
regularly  attended  Mass,  and  declared  her  attachment 
to  the  ceremonies  of  the  Church  as  she  found  them ; 
her  only  objection  being  to  the  elevation  of  the  Host 
during  the  celebration  of  the  Mass.  The  ornaments 
of  the  royal  chapel  remained  the  same  as  they  were 
under  her  sister  :  there  vfas  a  crucifix  over  the  altar, 
with  tapers  lighted  before  the  Sacrament,  incense  was 
burnt,  and  obeisance  was  made  before  the  altar.  Her 
state-council  consisted  both  of  Romanists  and  Re- 
formers :  she  retained  eleven  of  Mary's  counsellors, 
to  whom  she  added  eight  favourable  to  the  Reforma- 
tion ;  whilst  she  took  as  her  principal  adviser,  Cecil, 
principal  Secretary  of  State,  and  Sir  Nicolas  Bacon, 
Lord  Keeper.  In  order  to  prevent  disputes  about 
religion,  at  a  time  when  party  -  spirit  between  the 
Romanists  and  Reformers  ran  high,  she  issued  a  pro- 
clamation for  the  suppression  of  preaching  :  till  the 
meeting  of  Parliament,  the  people  might  only  give 
audience  "  to  the  Gospels  and  Epistels,  commonly 
called  the  Gospel  and  Epistel  of  the  day,  and  the  ten 
Commandments,  without  exposition  or  addition  of  any 
maner,  sense  or  meaning,  to  be  applyed  or  added ;  nor 

*"  Strype's  Annals.  Soames  says  all  the  bishops  were  present,  although, 
on  account  of  the  recent  great  mortality,  this  number  was  small.  Most 
writers  assert  that  only  one  bishop,  Oglethorpe,  was  present,  the  others 
being  unwilling  to  attend.  But  their  authority  seems  to  be  Camden,  who, 
Soames  tells  us,  was  at  that  time  a  child;  and  it  is  to  be  remarked  that, 
though  Camden  says  Oglethorpe  officiated,  he  does  not  say  the  other 
bishops  were  not  present.  It  would  appear  that  all  the  diocesan  bishops 
were  present,  except  Bonner ;  and  that  he  lent  his  scarlet  robes  to  another 
prelate,  who  would  not  otherwise  have  been  properly  dressed.  (Hook, 
ix.  153.) 


AND  THE  RISE  OF  PURITANISM. 


to  use  any  other  maner  of  public  prayer,  rite  or  cere- 
mony in  the  Church,  but  that  which  is  already  used 
as  by  law  receaved ;  or  the  common  Litany  used  at 
present  in  her  Majesty's  own  chapel,  and  the  Lord's 
Prayer  and  the  Crede  in  English."  The  religion  at 
that  time  established,  that  is,  the  Roman,  was  for  a 
time  to  continue ;  but  the  reformers  might  have  the 
service  in  their  own  language,  only  without  preaching. 

Cecil  not  only  clearly  understood  the  temper  of 
the  nation,  that  the  great  majority  were  in  favour  of 
a  moderate  reform  ;  but  he  saw,  with  statesmanlike 
insight,  the  danger  that  would  accompany  such  a  move- 
ment. On  one  side,  he  saw  the  animosity  of  Rome ; 
how  the  Pope  would  place  the  kingdom  under  an 
interdict,  and  bestow  it  on  a  foreign  prince  :  on  the 
other,  the  coming  trouble  from  the  Puritans,  how 
when  they  saw  that  all  ceremonies  were  not  abo- 
lished, and  that  any  doctrine  or  practice  except  their 
own  was  retained,  they  would  call  it  "  a  cloaked  pa- 
pistry, or  a  mingle-mangle."  He  was  anxious  that 
the  Prayer-Book  should  be  restored  in  such  a  manner 
that  the  influence  of  the  ultra -reformers  might  not 
endanger  the  throne  and  commonwealth. 

Such  were  the  difficulties  that  beset  Elizabeth.  She 
had  to  contend  with  Romanism  on  the  one  hand,  and 
Puritanism  on  the  other.  She  was  bent  on  reform  ; 
but  it  was  the  moderate  reform  of  her  father,  preserv- 
ing as  much  of  the  old  Church  as  possible ;  and  she 
had  no  intention  of  forming  an  alliance  with  the  Pro- 
testants. Communication  had  been  opened  with  the 
Pope,  through  Sir  Edward  Carne,  the  ambassador ; 
pending  his  answer,  everything  was  done  to  conciliate 
him.  The  future  of  England's  religion  was  in  the 
Pope's  hands. 


342 


THE  ROMAN  SCHISM, 


The  conduct  of  the  Pope  was  coarse  and  insolent. 
He  refused  to  recognise  her  title,  on  the  ground  that 
she  was  illegitimate  :  and  her  succession  to  the  throne, 
which  was  a  fief  of  the  papal  see,  without  his  sanction, 
was  an  act  of  impertinence.  Of  this  the  queen  took 
no  further  notice,  beyond  the  withdrawal  of  the  am- 
bassador. Still  the  queen  and  Cecil  were  desirous  of 
conciliating  the  Romanizing  part  of  her  subjects,  if 
only  they  would  obey  the  laws  of  the  country. 

The  first  Parliament  met  in  December,  1558,  and 
never  did  Parliament  meet  under  circumstances  more 
imperative.  It  had  to  undo,  in  face  of  strong  oppo- 
sition, all  the  work  of  Mary's  reign ;  to  repeal  the  laws 
by  which  Mary  had  abolished  the  acts  of  Henry  and 
Edward ;  to  repeal  the  penal  laws,  and  to  restore 
the  superseded  services  and  ritual,  and  the  appoint- 
ment of  bishops  by  the  cojige  d'elire.  Unfortunately, 
it  undid  whatever  little  good  Mary  had  done,  for  in 
one  respect  Mary's  character  contrasted  favourably 
with  that  of  Elizabeth.  Mary  had  relinquished  her 
rights  to  the  tenths  and  first-fruits  from  ecclesiastical 
benefices,  which  had  been  conferred  on  the  Crown  in 
the  reign  of  Henry  V HI.;  these  rights  were  now, 
although  the  measure  was  strongly  resisted  by  the 
bishops,  resumed  by  Elizabeth,  together  with  the  right 
to  any  property  belonging  to  vacant  sees,  and  of  trans- 
ferring a  pretended  equivalent  (which  was  generally 
most  inadequate)  for  the  impropriations  vested  in  the 
Crown. 

In  the  first  session  of  Parliament  was  passed,  under 
opposition  from  all  the  bishops  except  Kitchin  of 
Llandaff,  an  act  entitled  "  An  Act  for  restoring  to 
the  Crown  the  ancient  jurisdiction  over  the  State 
Ecclesiastical,  and  abolishing  all  foreign  powers  re- 


AND  THE  RISE  OF  PURITANISM. 


'pugnant  to  the  same."  Henry  had  assumed  the  title 
'of  Supreme  Head  of  the  Church  on  earth  ;  EHzabeth, 
from  conscientious  scruples  it  is  said,  refused  this  title, 
•even  when  accompanied  with  any  limitation  :  she 
would  only  accept  the  title  of  "Supreme  Governor" 
instead  of  "  Supreme  Head."  The  distinction  seems 
to  be  rather  without  a  difference.  The  Queen,  it  is 
true,  in  the  Injunctions  which  she  published,  attached 
to  the  Royal  Supremacy  an  unobjectionable  inter- 
pretation :  "Her  Majesty  neither  doth  nor  ever  will 
challenge  any  authority  other  than  was  challenged 
and  lately  used  by  the  noble  kings  of  famous  memory, 
Henry  VHI.  and  Edward  VI.,  which  is  and  was  of 
ancient  time  due  to  the  imperial  Crown  of  this  realm  ; 
that  is,  under  God  to  have  the  sovereignty  and  rule 
over  all  manner  of  persons  born  within  these  her 
realms,  dominions,  and  countries,  of  what  state,  either 
ecclesiastical  or  temporal,  soever  they  may  be,  so  as 
no  other  foreign  power  shall  or  ought  to  have  any 
superiority  over  them."  But,  notwithstanding  this 
explanation,  the  Supremacy  Act  invested  the  queen 
with  a  power  far  beyond  the  legitimate  limits  of  the 
supremacy,  a  power  scarcely  inferior  to  that  exercised 
by  the  Pope  ;  it  empowered  the  queen  and  her  suc- 
cessors to  erect  the  High  Commission  Court  for  the 
exercise  of  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction  ;  to  appoint,  by 
letters  patent  under  the  Great  Seal,  such  persons  as 
she  should  think  fit  for  the  exercising  under  the  Crown 
all  manner  of  spiritual  or  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction 
By  this  act  the  Visitors  are  empowered  to  "  visit, 
reform,  redress,  order,  correct,  and  amend  all  such 
errors,  heresies,  schisms,  abuses,  offences,  contempts, 

'  Collier,  ii.  420. 


344 


THE  ROMAN  SCHISM, 


and  enormities,  which  by  any  manner,  spiritual  or 
ecclesiastical  power,  authority,  or  jurisdiction,  can  or 
may  lawfully  be  reformed,  ordered,  redeemed,  cor- 
rected, or  amended."  There  was,  however,  an  im- 
portant proviso  :  "No  person  or  persons  who  shall 
be  authorised  by  the  queen,  her  heirs,  or  successors, 
to  execute  any  spiritual  jurisdiction,  shall  have  any 
authority  or  power  to  determine  or  judge  any  matter 
or  cause  to  be  heresy,  but  only  such  as  heretofore  had 
been  determined,  ordered,  or  adjudged  to  be  heresy 
by  the  authority  of  the  canonical  scriptures,  or  by  the 
first  four  General  Councils,  or  any  of  them,  or  any 
other  General  Council,  wherein  the  same  was  declared 
heresy  by  the  express  and  plain  words  of  the  canoni- 
cal scriptures,  or  such  as  hereafter  shall  be  ordered, 
judged,  or  determined  to  be  heresy  by  the  High  Court 
of  Parliament  of  the  realm,  with  the  assent  of  the 
clergy  in  their  Convocation  ;  anything  in  this  act  to 
the  contrary  notwithstanding." 

To  give  some  ecclesiastical  sanction  to  measures 
which  had  been  so  strongly  opposed  by  the  bishops 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  Heath,  Archbishop  of  York, 
was  ordered  to  appoint  a  conference  in  Westminster 
Abbey,  on  March  31,  1559,  between  bishops  and  clergy 
selected  from  the  Romanists  and  the  Reformers,  to 
discuss  the  points  of  difference  between  the  two  par- 
ties. On  the  side  of  the  Romanists,  the  bishops  of 
Winchester,  Chester,  Lichfield,  and  Lincoln,  with  four 
other  clergy,  were  appointed  :  on  that  of  the  Reform- 
ers were  Scory,  late  Bishop  of  Chichester ;  Cox,  late 
Dean  of  Westminster  ;  Horne,  late  Dean  of  Durham  ; 
Aylmer,  late  Archdeacon  of  Stow  ;  and  Whitehead, 
Grindal,  Guest,  and  Jewel.  The  disputation  took 
place  in  the  presence  of  the  Privy  Council,  many  of 


AND  THE  RISE  OF  PURITANISM. 


345 


the  House  of  Lords,  and  some  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. On  the  first  day  it  was  carried  on  with  order 
and  decorum  ;  but  on  the  second  the  Romanists,  find- 
ing themselves  unequal  to  the  task  they  had  under- 
taken, violated  the  terms  to  which  they  had  agreed. 
The  Bishops  of  Winchester  and  Lincoln  behaved  with 
great  violence,  and  threatened  to  excommunicate  the 
queen,  and  were  in  consequence  committed  to  the 
Tower.    And  so  the  matter  was  broken  off. 

The  other  important  act  of  the  session  was  the  Act 
of  Uniformity,  which  authorized  the  new  Prayer- Book 
of  Queen  Elizabeth.  A  committee  had  assembled 
under  the  presidency  of  Sir  Thomas  Smith,  the  queen's 
Secretary,  to  revise  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer. 
The  committee  consisted  of  Matthew  Parker,  soon 
to  become  Archbishop  of  Canterbury ;  Grindal,  after- 
wards Bishop  of  London,  and  Archbishop  of  York 
and  Canterbury ;  Pilkington,  Dean  of  Durham  ;  Cox, 
Bishop  of  Ely ;  May  (elected  to  York,  but  who  died 
before  his  consecration)  ;  Sir  Thomas  Smith,  Dean 
of  Carlisle  ;  Whitehead,  who  declined  the  Archbishop- 
ric of  Canterbury ;  Sandys,  Archbishop  of  York ;  and 
Guest,  Bishop  of  Rochester  and  Salisbury ;  but  it  is 
a  question  how  far  any  of  the  few  alterations  even- 
tually made  were  the  results  of  their  labours. 

The  two  principal  parties  in  the  Church  were  very 
active,  one  desirous  of  abolishing  episcopacy  alto- 
gether, and  every  rite  and  ceremony  which  was  used 
by  Rome,  and  to  introduce  the  service  and  disci- 
pline of  Geneva ;  the  other,  (and  amongst  them  the 
Queen  and  Cecil)  wished  to  re-introduce  the  First 
Prayer-Book  of  King  Edward  VL,  and  if  any  altera- 
tions were  required,  to  remodel  it  in  a  Catholic  rather 


346 


THE  ROMAN  SCHISM, 


than  a  Puritan  direction.  Her  council,  however^  seem 
to  have  been  guided  by  the  consideration  that  while, 
on  the  one  hand,  it  was  impossible  to  reconcile  the 
Romanists,  on  the  other,  it  was  policy  to  consult,  as 
far  as  possible,  the  wishes  of  the  exiles  who  had  lately 
returned  from  Geneva ;  they,  therefore,  recommended 
that  the  second  book  should  be  attached  to  the  Act 
of  Uniformity. 

The  queen,  who  was  an  advocate  for  a  high  ritual 
(the  practice  in  her  own  chapel  shews  this),  would 
not  consent  to  this  simple  procedure.  A  compromise 
was  effected  :  so  the  book  submitted  to  Parliament 
was  that  authorized  in  the  fifth  and  sixth  years  of 
King  Edward  VI.,  with  a  few  alterations.  A  table  of 
proper  lessons  for  Sundays  was  added ;  the  "  accus- 
tomed place,"  or  chancel,  instead  of  "  in  such  place  as 
the  people  may  best  hear,"  was  appointed  for  the  cele- 
bration of  divine  service ;  the  black  rubric,  as  it  is 
called,  which  had  been  irregularly  inserted  in  the  second 
book,  was  omitted,  as  also  the  words  in  the  Litany, 
"  from  the  tyranny  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome  and  all  his 
detestable  enormities  ;"  the  words  in  the  Delivery, 
"  The  Body  .  .  .  Blood  ...  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
which  was  given  .  .  .  shed  .  .  .  for  thee,  preserve  thy 
body  and  soul  unto  everlasting  life,"  were  inserted 
with  the  words  from  the  second  book,  "  Take  and 
eat  .  .  .  drink  .  .  .  this  in  remembrance  that  Christ 
died  for  thee .  .  .  that  Christ's  Blood  was  shed  for  thee 
.  .  .  and  feed  on  Him  in  thy  heart  by  faith  with  thanks- 
eivinor  .  .  .  and  be  thankful ;"  which  had  been  before 
substituted.  But  the  most  important  alteration,  pro- 
bably at  the  suggestion  of  the  queen,  was  a  return 
to  the  ornaments  of  the  Church  which  had  prevailed 


AND  THE  RISE  OF  PURITANISM. 


347 


under  the  first,  but  had  been  discontinued  under  the 
second  book.  The  Proviso  enacting  this,  appeared 
nearly  at  the  end  of  the  Act,  and  ran  thus  :  "  Pro- 
vided always  and  be  it  enacted,  that  such  Orna- 
ments of  the  Church,  and  of  the  Ministers  thereof, 
shall  be  retained  and  be  in  use,  as  was  in  this 
Church  of  England,  by  authority  of  Parliament,  in 
the  second  year  of  the  reign  of  King  Edward  VI., 
until  other  order  shall  be  therein  taken  by  the  autho- 
rity of  the  Queen's  Majesty,  with  the  advice  of  her 
Commissioners  appointed  and  authorized  under  the 
Great  Seal  of  England,  for  causes  Ecclesiastical,  or 
of  the  Metropolitan  of  this  Realm."  The  rubric  which 
incorporated  the  clause  of  the  Act,  ran  :  "  And  here 
it  is  to  be  noted,  that  the  Minister  at  the  time  of  the 
Communion,  and  at  all  other  times  in  his  Ministra- 
tion, shall  use  such  Ornaments  in  the  Church  as  were 
in  use  by  authority  of  Parliament  in  the  second  year 
of  the  reign  of  King  Edward  VI.,  according  to  the 
Act  of  Parliament  set  in  the  beginning  of  this  Book." 
Thus  altered,  the  new  Prayer-Book,  which  was  vir- 
tually the  same  as  that  which  had  been  approved 
by  Convocation  in  the  reign  of  Edward  VI.,  was  laid 
before  Parliament,  which,  without  any  recorded  dis- 
cussion, annexed  it  to  the  Act  of  Uniformity. 

The  Elizabethan  Act  of  Uniformity  was  passed  on 
April  28,  1559,  and  was  ordered  to  come  in  use  on 
the  feast  of  St.  John  the  Baptist,  June  24  ;  it  was, 
however,  in  use  within  a  fortnight  in  the  queen's 
chapel  and  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  and  before  the  end 
of  May  was  in  general  use  in  the  churches  through- 
out the  land.  In  the  following  year  it  was,  at  the 
request  of  the  Universities,  translated  into  Latin  by 
Walter  H  addon  ;  but  this,  with  the  necessary  changes. 


348 


THE  ROMAN  SCHISM, 


was  little  more  than  a  reproduction  of  the  translation 
previously  made  by  Alexander  Aless. 

The  same  year  that  the  Act  of  Uniformity  was 
passed,  in  order  to  test  the  feelings  of  the  clergy, 
a  general  visitation  of  the  country  was  determined 
upon  ;  and,  at  the  same  time,  a  body  of  fifty-three 
Injunctions'^  were  issued,  very  similar  to  those  of  Ed- 
ward VI,,  for  the  instruction  of  the  clergy.  Through- 
out the  kingdom  the  revised  Prayer- Book  was  wil- 
lingly received,  even  by  the  vast  majority  of  the 
Romanist  laity ;  and  from  the  report  of  the  Com- 
missioners, it  appears  that  out  of  9,400  clergy,  only 
80  rectors  (and  to  them  pensions  were  assigned), 
6  abbots,  12  archdeacons,  50  prebendaries,  and  15 
heads  of  colleges,  were  deprived  for  refusing  to  con- 
form to  the  new  laws. 

Pope  Paul  IV.  having  died  on  August  18,  1559, 
was  succeeded  by  Pius  IV,  The  new  Pope  sent  his 
nuncio  with  a  letter  to  the  queen,  announcing  his  ap- 
proval and  willingness  to  accept  the  new  Prayer- Book, 
as  well  as  the  Communion  in  both  kinds,  if  only  the 
queen  would  acknowledge  his  supremacy  ^  Such 

^  A  few  of  these  must  be  mentioned.  Images  were  not  ordered  to  be 
taken  away  (n.b.  the  queen  retained  a  crucifix  in  her  own  chapel),  but  it 
was  forbidden  to  "  set  forth,  or  extol  the  dignity  of  any  image,  relic,  or 
miracle  ; "  the  Common  Prayer  was  to  be  sung  with  as  clear  pronun- 
ciation as  if  read ;  an  anthem  might  be  sung  at  the  beginning  or  the 
end  of  the  service  ;  organs  and  other  instrumental  music  might  be  made 
use  of  In  another  document,  issued  later,  called  "  Interpretations  and 
further  Considerations,"  it  is  ordered  that  there  be  used  in  the  church 
"  only  one  apparel,  as  the  Cope  in  the  ministration  of  the  Lord's  Supper, 
and  the  Surplice  in  all  other  ministrations  ;"  but  these  latter  seem  never 
to  have  been  issued  with  authority. 

'  Lord  Cope  vouches  for  this  as  an  undoubted  fact.  Pope  Pius,  he 
says,  wrote  a  letter  to  the  Queen,  "  in  which  he  did  allow  the  Bible,  and 
Book  of  Divine  Service,  as  it  is  now  used  amongst  us,  to  be  authentic,  and 


AND  THE  RISE  OF  PURITANISM.  349 

terms  were,  of  course,  now  inadmissible  ;  although, 
had  they  been  made  earlier,  they  might  have  had  an 
effect  on  the  whole  after-course  of  the  Reformation. 
The  insulting  language  of  the  late  Pope  had  rendered 
it  now  impossible ;  the  laws  precluded  the  entrance 
into  the  land  of  a  papal  legate  without  the  consent 
of  Parliament,  and  the  queen's  own  dignity  forbade 
her  to  acknowledge  a  power  which  had  so  grievously 
and  wantonly  insulted  her. 

The  Act  of  Supremacy  having  been  passed,  the 
bishops  must  either  submit,  or  be  deprived.  Several 
bishops  had  lately  died  from  the  fearful  epidemic 
which  ravaged  the  country  at  the  end  of  Mary's  reign ; 
and  the  see  of  Canterbury  being  vacant,  there  were 
only  fourteen  bishops  living.  Several  of  these  bishops 
had  before  supported  Henry  in  the  matter  of  the  su- 
premacy; but  now,  all  of  them,  with  the  exception 
of  Kitchin  of  Llandaff,  thinking  probably  thus  to  force 
the  queen  to  yield,  through  want  of  a  sufficient  num- 
ber of  bishops  to  consecrate  to  the  vacant  sees,  re- 
fused compliance,  and  were  deprived  K 

Fortunately,  there  was  no  difficulty  in  consecrating 
new  bishops.  Consecration  by  one  bishop,  although 
irregular  according  to  the  canons  of  the  Church,  is 
not  invalid ;  the  number  of  three  being  required  only 
to  prevent  clandestine  ordinations.    In  England,  the 

not  repugnant  to  truth.  .  .  .  That  he  would  also  allow  it  unto  us,  without 
changing  any  part,  so  as  her  Majesty  would  acknowledge  to  receive  it 
from  the  Pope,  and  by  his  allowance  ;  which  her  Majesty  denying  to  do, 
was  excommunicated.  And  this  is  the  truth  concerning  Pope  Pius  Quar- 
tus,  as  I  have  faith  to  God  and  man.  /  /lave  often  times  heard  avowed 
by  the  queen  herself  her  own  words  ....  and  I  have  conferred  with  some 
lords  that  were  of  greatest  reckoning  in  the  State,  who  had  seen  and  read 
the  letters  which  the  Pope  had  sent  to  that  effect" 

'  Kitchin  managed  to  keep  his  bishopric  under  Henry,  Edward,  Mary, 
and  Elizabeth  ;  but  it  is  thought  he  was  ultimately  deprived. 


350 


THE   ROMAN  SCHISM, 


consecration  of  an  archbishop  by  three  bishops,  al- 
though it  would  not  have  been  according  to  the  law  ^, 
would  have  been  valid.  But  in  the  consecration  of 
Archbishop  Parker  to  the  vacant  see  of  Canterbury, 
everything  was  done,  not  only  canonically,  according 
to  the  laws  of  the  Church  Catholic,  but  also  legally, 
according  to  the  laws  of  the  realm. 

There  were  living  three  bishops  who  had  been 
ejected  under  Mary  ;  Coverdale,  late  Bishop  of  Ex- 
eter ;  Barlow,  Bishop-elect  of  Chichester,  late  of  Bath 
and  Wells ;  and  Scory,  Bishop-elect  of  Hereford,  late 
Bishop  of  Chichester,  To  these  must  be  added,  Bale, 
Bishop  of  Ossory ;  Hodgkins,  Suffragan -bishop  of 
Bedford  ;  John,  Suffragan  of  Thetford  ;  and  also 
Kitchin,  Bishop  of  Llandaff. 

On  August  I,  1559,  Matthew  Parker,  who  had 
been  chaplain  to  Ann  Boleyn,  was  elected  archbishop; 
on  December  9,  his  election  was  confirmed  in  the 
church  of  St.  Mary-le-bow  ;  and  on  December  1 7,  he 
was  consecrated  in  the  chapel  of  Lambeth  by  Barlow, 
Scory,  Coverdale,  and  Hodgkins.  Soon  afterwards, 
other  bishops  were  consecrated  by  Parker,  and  other 
assistant  bishops,  to  the  vacant  sees  ;  Grindal  to 
London,  Jewel  to  Salisbury,  Pilkington  to  Durham, 
Cox  to  Ely,  Sandys  to  Worcester,  Merick  to  Bangor, 
Young  to  St.  David's,  Bullingham  to  Lincoln,  Davis 
to  St.  Asaph,  Guest  to  Rochester ;  whilst  Scory  was 
translated  to  Hereford,  and  Barlow  to  Chichester  \ 

8  Statute  25  Henry  VIII.,  required  for  the  consecration  of  an  arch- 
bishop a  metropolitan  and  two  bishops ;  or,  in  the  absence  of  a  metro- 
politan, four  bishops. 

Owing  to  the  loss  of  a  register,  Roman  Catholic  controversialists 
have  raised  a  question  as  to  Barlow's  proper  consecration:  the  question, 
however,  has  been  thoroughly  investigated  and  refuted  by  Courayer, 
Mason,  Bramhall,  the  late  Mr.  Haddan,  and  by  the  Roman  Catholic  his-- 


AND  THE  RISE  OF  PURITANISM.  35  I 

Some  forty  years  afterwards  (i.e.  in  1604),  a  foolish 
story  was  invented,  known  as  the  "Nag's  Head"  Fable, 
which  is  attributed  to  Neale,  one  of  Bonner's  chaplains. 
Parker  and  the  bishops  elect  were  said  to  have  dined 
together  at  the  "  Nag's  Head  "  tavern,  in  Cheapside ; 
where,  says  the  relater,  he  looked  through  the  key- 
hole, and  saw  Scory  laying  a  Bible  on  the  head  of  each 
one,  saying,  "  Take  thou  authority  to  preach  the  Word 
of  God."  This  story  is  disbelieved  now  by  all  leading 
Romanists ;  its  falsehood  is  at  once  apparent ;  it  was 
not  heard  of  till  forty  years  after  the  event ;  a  noble- 
man who  was  alive,  and  was  present  at  Parker's  con- 
secration, denied  the  truth  of  it ;  and  the  full  record 
of  the  consecration  of  Parker  by  Barlow,  Scory,  Cover- 
dale,  and  Hodgkins,  is  duly  entered  in  the  register  in 
the  library  of  Lambeth  Palace. 

Parker's  own  conduct  probably  gave  rise  to  the 
story.  Although  perhaps  a  discreet  man,  he  was 
certainly  a  very  timid  one ;  and,  for  fear  of  offending 
the  Puritans  (who  hated  him  in  return'),  "curtailed 
the  ceremonies  of  consecration,  by  not  insisting  upon 
the  mitre,  the  gloves,  or  the  pastoral-staff,  the  bestowal 

torian,  Lingard.  Barlow  had  been  appointed  in  1536  to  the  see  of 
St.  Asaph,  and  in  the  same  year,  to  the  more  lucrative  see  of  St.  David's  ; 
in  1548  he  was  translated  to  Bath  and  Wells,  and  in  1559  to  Chichester. 
Barlow,  although  himself  properly  consecrated,  was  a  thorough  Erastian  ; 
he  maintained  that  any  layman  chosen  by  the  king  as  Head  of  the  Church, 
was  as  good  as  "the  best  bishop  in  England."  This  Erastianism  does 
not  appear  to  have  been  a  drawback  to  his  daughters  contracting  epis- 
copal marriages.  One  married  Toby  Matthew,  Archbishop  of  York ; 
another,  William  Wickham  of  Lincoln  ;  another,  Day  of  Chichester ; 
and  a  fourth,  the  Bishop  of  Hereford. 

'  The  hatred  of  the  Puritans  for  Parker  extended  beyond  his  death. 
In  the  reign  of  Charles  I.,  they  destroyed  the  monument  that  was  raised 
over  his  remains,  dug  up  his  coffin,  and  sold  the  lead,  and  buried  his 
bones  on  a  dung-hill,  where  they  remained,  until  they  were  rescued,  and 
decently  interred  by  an  order  obtained  by  Archbishop  Sancroft  from  the 
House  of  Lords. 


352 


THE  ROMAN  SCHISM, 


of  which  had  for  several  centuries  formed  part,  though 
not  an  essential  part,  of  the  ordinal  \ 

One  of  Parker's  earliest  acts  as  archbishop  was  to 
remodel  the  Articles  of  Religion ;  following,  as  Cran- 
mer  had  done,  the  Lutheran  formularies ;  but  drawing 
now  on  the  Wurtemburg,  rather  than  on  the  Augs- 
burg Confession. 

In  1562,  he  presented  a  draft 'of  the  Articles  of 
1552  to  Convocation,  with  additions,  omissions,  and 
alterations,  most  of  which  Convocation  accepted  : 
the  Queen  herself  is  said  to  have  added  the  famous 
clause,  "The  Church  hath  power  to  decree  rites  and 
ceremonies,  and  authority  in  controversies  of  faith,"  in 
the  Twentieth  Article.  This  clause  does  not  appear  in 
the  original  document  to  which  the  bishops  subscribed 
their  names,  nor  in  the  earliest  edition  of  the  Latin 
printed  copies,  or  in  the  earlier  editions  of  the  English 
translation.  In  1571,  the  Articles,  as  we  now  have 
them,  were  committed  to  the  editorship  of  Bishop  Jewel, 
and  then  received  the  sanction  both  of  Convocation  and 
Parliament,  in  Latin  and  English ;  the  difference  be- 
tween the  two  now  is,  that  the  English  version  con- 
tains, and  the  Latin  omits,  the  famous  clause  :  which  of 
the  two  is  the  correct  version,  as  ultimately  approved 
by  Convocation,  it  is  impossible  to  say  ;  but  the  fact 
remains  that  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  have  come  down 
to  us  with  the  sanction  of  Convocation,  and  that  they 
have  had  the  authority  of  the  bishops  and  clergy  of 
the  Church  for  more  than  three  hundred  years  \ 

In  1563  appeared  the  second  book  of  Homilies, 
authorised  by  Convocation,  and  ratified  by  the  queen 
as  supplemental  to  the  first  book.  By  whom  the  book 
was  composed  is  uncertain  :  Burton  attributes  it  to 

Hook,  vol.  ix.  p.  206.  '  Bishop  Brown,  39  Art.,  p.  9. 


AND  THE  RISE  OF  PURITANISM. 


353 


Jewel,  but  Archbishop  Parker  asserts  that  he  and 
other  bishops  bore  some  part  in  it. 

Several  versions  of  the  Bible  had  now  been  put 
forth,  the  chief  of  which  were  Cranmer's  or  the  Great 
Bible,  and  the  Geneva  Bible,  the  latter  of  which  had 
been  drawn  up  by  the  exiles  in  Geneva,  and  appeared 
about  1560.  But  the  Great  Bible  was  an  imperfect 
translation,  whilst  the  Geneva  Bible  bore  marks  of 
a  Calvinistic  tendency.  Another  Bible  therefore  was 
published  in  1568,  under  the  direction  of  Parker, 
which,  as  the  majority  of  persons  employed  in  it  were 
bishops,  is  known  as  the  "  Bishops'  Bible."  A  large 
Preface  was  prefixed  to  it,  with  a  Table  of  the  degrees 
within  which  matrimony  is  forbidden,  since  inserted  in 
the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  annexed  ™. 

The  queen,  as  we  have  seen,  was  fond  of  a  high  ce- 
remonial, and  of  outward  order  in  religion  ;  the  bishops 
and  clergy,  however,  seem  to  have  been  somewhat 
more  lax  in  this  respect  than  she  approved.  In  1564 
Cecil  complained  to  the  queen  of  the  incongruous 
manner  in  which  the  services  of  the  Church  were  cele- 
brated. Some  said  the  service  in  the  chancel,  some  in 
the  body  of  the  church,  some  in  a  seat  made  in  the 
church,  some  in  the  pulpit  facing  the  people,  some 
in  surplices,  some  without.  In  some  churches  the 
holy  table  was  in  the  body  of  the  chancel,  in  some 
in  the  middle  of  the  church,  in  some  altar-wise  near 
the  wall ;  sometimes  with  a  carpet  on  it,  and  some- 
times without  any  covering.     Some  celebrated  the 

The  Romanists,  not  long  after,  saw  the  necessity  of  publishing  an 
English  translation  for  their  community.  Accordingly  a  translation  of 
the  New  Testament  was  published  at  Rheims  in  1582,  whilst  a  transla- 
tion of  the  whole  Bible  was  published  at  Douay  in  1609,  both  made  from 
the  Vulgate. 


354 


THE  ROMAN  SCHISM, 


Holy  Communion  in  surplice  and  cope,  some  with 
only  surplice,  some  with  neither ;  some  with  a  chalice, 
others  with  a  common  cup  ;  some  with  leavened,  others 
with  common  bread ;  some  received  kneeling,  others 
standing  or  sitting ;  some  baptized  in  a  font,  making 
the  sign  of  the  cross ;  some  in  a  basin  without  the 
sign ;  some  celebrated  baptism  in  a  surplice,  others 
without ;  some  went  about  in  a  square  cap,  others 
a  round  ;  some  in  scholar's  clothes,  and  some  without. 

The  queen  was  angry  with  the  bishops  for  allowing 
such  an  indecent  system  to  prevail,  and  ordered  Arch- 
bishop Parker  to  take  such  steps  as  were  necessary  to 
promote  better  order.    Of  the  bishops  appointed  at 
the  beginning  of  the  reign  most  had  Puritanical  ten- 
dencies, and  were  either  averse  to  ceremonial  them- 
selves, or  unwilling  to  force  it  on  the  scruples  of  the 
weaker  clergy,  and  were  therefore  content  to  exact 
the  minimum  of  ritual.    In  order  to  promote  greater 
uniformity,  Parker,  on  March  3,  1565,  sent  to  Cecil 
a   "  Book  of  Articles,"  requesting  that  the  queen 
would  license  them  ;  but  she  misliked  them  alto- 
gether.    Parker  then  presented  to  the  Queen,  on 
March  28,  1566,  certain  ordinances  known  as  "Ad- 
vertisements," which  prescribed  merely  the  minimum 
of  ritual  to  be  observed ;  in  cathedrals,  the  celebrant 
at  the  Holy  Communion  was  to  wear  a  cope,  the  gos- 
peller and  epistoler  being  vested  agreeably.  There 
is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  these  Advertisements, 
drawn  up  by  Archbishop  Parker,  were  meant  to  forbid 
the  vestments  of  the  first  book,  which  were  enacted 
by  the  rubric  of  1559,  but  only  to  enforce  some  disci- 
pline in'churches,  and  more  in  cathedrals.    The  queen, 
as  we  have  seen,  was  fond  of  a  high  ritual ;  she  had 
probably  intended  that  a  more,  instead  of  a  less,  ornate 


AND  THE  RISE  OF  PURITANISM. 


355 


ritual  should  be  uniformly  adopted.  The  Archbishop 
knew  this  ;  and  he  would  never  have  dared  to  forbid 
them,  had  the  Advertisements  diminished  from  the 
lawful  ritual.  They  do  not  in  any  way  affect  the 
rubric  of  1559,  nor  can  they  be  considered  as  the 
"  taking  of  further  order,"  spoken  of  in  the  proviso ; 
nor  is  there  any  evidence  to  shew  that  the  queen  at 
any  time  even  saw  them. 

The  Advertisements  had  therefore  only  the  autho- 
rity of  the  bishops.  Vested  with  such  a  power,  Parker 
summoned  the  London  clergy  to  meet  him  at  Lam- 
beth ;  of  one  hundred,  only  thirty -seven  refused  to 
sign  the  Advertisements,  and  they,  after  three  months 
allowed  for  consideration,  were  deprived. 

Though  Cambridge  was  at  the  time  the  hot-bed  of 
Puritanism,  and  Catholicism  was  in  the  ascendant  at 
Oxford,  yet  the  most  eminent  Nonconformists  were 
two  Oxford  men, — Sampson,  Dean  of  Christ  Church, 
and  Humphrey,  President  of  Magdalen,  and  Regius 
Professor  of  Divinity.  In  vain  Bullinger  and  Gualter 
tried  to  persuade  them  to  conform ;  they  refused,  and 
were  deposed.  But  as  yet  there  was  no  general  sepa- 
ration of  the  Puritans  from  the  Church. 

In  1570  originated  that  papal  schism  which  has 
divided  the  Anglican  and  Roman  Churches  to  the 
present  day.  The  Romanists  were  quietly  settling 
down,  and  conforming  to  the  worship  of  the  Church 
of  England  ° ;  and  it  was  the  Puritans  alone  who 
caused  trouble  and  anxiety.    But  this  conformity  cre- 

"  "  For  divers  years  in  Queen  Elizabeth's  reign  there  was  no  recusant 
known  in  England  :  but  even  they  who  were  most  addicted  to  Roman 
opinions,  yet  frequented  our  churches  and  public  assemblies,  and  did 
join  with  us  in  the  use  of  the  same  prayers  and  divine  offices  without 
any  scruple,  till  they  were  prohibited  by  a  papal  bull  for  the  interest  of 
the  Roman  court." — Archbishop  Bramhall,  i.  248. 

A  a  2 


356 


THE  ROMAN  SCHISM, 


ated  alarm  at  Rome,  and  a  feeling  that  more  vigorous 
measures  must  in  consequence  be  adopted.  The  Je- 
suits, a  religious  order  founded  in  1534  by  Ignatius 
Loyola,  projected  a  plan  for  assailing  the  faith  of  the 
country.  In  1569  they  formed  the  idea  of  founding 
seminaries  abroad,  to  educate  English  missionaries  for 
the  conversion  of  England.  The  first  founded  was 
at  Douay,  at  the  expense  of  Philip  II.  of  Spain;  and 
William  Allen,  a  distinguished  though  fanatical  Eng- 
lishman, who  had  been  a  Fellow  of  Oriel,  and  after- 
wards Principal  of  St.  Mary  Hall,  was  appointed  as 
its  first  Head,  and  for  his  zeal  was  rewarded  with  a 
cardinal's  hat.  The  same  year  a  college  was  founded 
at  Rome  for  the  same  purpose,  of  which  Persons,  an 
English  Jesuit,  was  made  rector.  The  oath  taken  on 
admission  to  these  colleges  was  to  the  following  effect : 
"  Bred  in  the  English  college,  considering  how  great 
benefits  God  hath  bestowed  upon  me,  but  then  espe- 
cially when  He  brought  me  out  of  my  own  country 
so  infested  with  heresy,  and  made  me  a  member  of 
the  Catholic  Church,  I  promise  and  swear  ...  in 
due  time  to  receive  Holy  Orders,  to  return  to  Eng- 
land to  convert  the  souls  of  my  countrymen."  Hun- 
dreds of  clergy  were  sent  into  England  under  a  brief 
from  Pope  Pius  V.,  and  were  placed  under  the  direction 
of  Dr.  Allen.  They  did  not  hesitate  to  disguise  them- 
selves in  the  garb  of  Puritans or  when  apprehended, 
to  confess  that  the  revolution  of  the  state,  and  the 
assassination  of  the  queen,  was  their  object  ^.  In 

»  The  following  is  the  oath  taken  by  the  students  of  Douay,  to  whom 
Mary  had  given  a  refuge  in  Scotland  :  "although  I  may  pretend  in  case 
of  persecution,  or  otherwise,  to  be  heretically  disposed,  yet  in  soul  and 
conscience  I  shall  help,  aid,  and  succour  the  Mother  Church." 

p  Other  seminaries  were  in  time  established;  one  in  1589  at  Valladolid, 
another  at  Seville  in  1593,  another  at  St.  Omer  in  1596. 


AND  THE  RISE  OF  PURITANISM. 


357 


1570  Pope  Pius  V.  published  the  bull,  "  regnans  in 
excelsis,"  of  excommunication  and  deposition  against 
EHzabeth,  "  the  pretended  queen  of  England,"  as 
"a  vassal  of  iniquity,"  pronounced  an  anathema,  and 
cut  off  from  the  Church  all  that  adhered  to  her,  and 
absolved  her  subjects  from  their  oath  of  obedience. 

The  Government  were  in  alarm ;  there  were  con- 
stant attempts  against  Elizabeth's  life ;  so  a  statute 
was  passed,  making  it  high  treason  to  call  the  queen 
a  heretic,  a  schismatic,  or  a  usurper,  to  publish  any 
bull  from  Rome,  or  to  conceal  any  offences  against 
the  Crown.  The  Acts  of  Uniformity  were  strictly  en- 
forced ;  prosecutions  and  punishments  (it  can  scarcely 
be  said  for  religion,  for  they  were  political  rather  than 
religious'')  became  again  common  in  England;  it  was 
the  only  means  of  deterring  the  Seminarists,  or  Jesuits, 
v^ho  came  into  the  country  with  the  avowed  intention 
of  assassinating  the  queen.  The  feeling  of  the  country 
against  the  Romanists  was  thoroughly  aroused  by  the 
massacre  of  the  Huguenots  in  1572.  In  1580,  two 
Jesuits,  Campion  and  Persons,  openly  advocated  the 
cause  of  Philip,  King  of  Spain,  the  avowed  enemy  of 
England,  who  was  at  the  very  time  preparing  his 
"  invincible  Armada,"  with  the  determination  of  crush- 
ing the  English  power;  and  brought  down  upon  them- 
selves the  anger  of  the  Government.  Persons  managed 
to  escape  from  the  kingdom  ;  but  Campion  and  three 
others  were  executed.  The  Roman  Church  claims 
these  men  for  martyrs ;  if  they  were  not  traitors,  it 
is  difficult  to  understand  what  the  word  means. 

'  James  I.  said :  "  The  trewth  is  according  to  my  owne  knowledge,  the 
late  queene  of  famous  memory,  never  punished  any  Papist  for  religion." 
Charles  I.  said  :  "  I  am  informed  neither  Queen  Elizabeth  nor  my  father 
did  ever  avow  that  any  Priest  in  their  times  was  executed  merely  for 
religion."    (Pari.  Hist.  ii.  713.) 


358 


THE  ROMAN  SCHISM, 


The  Roman  schism  was  founded  on  the  excuse  that 
the  English  Church  had  proceeded  too  far;  another 
schism  arose  about  the  same  time,  on  the  ground  that 
it  had  not  proceeded  far  enough  in  the  way  of  Reforma- 
tion. The  various  ultra- Protestant  sects,  which  had 
sprung  into  life  as  early  as  the  time  of  Henry  VIII,, 
now  began  to  assume  a  cohesion,  and  under  the  common 
name  of  Puritans  (a  name  derived  from  the  Puritani 
or  Cathari  of  the  third  century),  to  exhibit  an  intole- 
rance which  was  soon  to  bring  havoc  on  the  Church. 

Puritanism  was  one  of  the  evils  of  the  Reformation. 
Whatever  corruptions  had  crept  into  the  mediaeval 
Church,  there  was  connected  with  it  an  authority  which 
rendered  that  Church  venerable.  But  when  the  chains 
which  bound  the  Church  to  Rome  were  loosened,  a 
spirit  of  revolution  was  fostered,  and  it  required  no 
great  foresight  to  predict  that  people,  when  once  they 
had  tasted  of  liberty,  would  not  patiently  endure  the 
yoke  of  bondage.  As  long  as  Henry  lived,  the  rigid 
laws  enforced  against  heretics  kept  the  malcontents 
tolerably  under  restraint.  Under  Edward,  headed  by 
Hooper,  they  increased  in  numbers  and  influence,  and 
shewed  only  too  clearly  that  if  ever  they  obtained  the 
upper  hand,  they  would  be  satisfied  with  nothing  short 
of  the  rejection  of  all  authority.  On  the  accession  of 
Elizabeth,  these  men  returned  from  Germany  and  Swit- 
zerland to  England,  bringing  with  them  what  Arch- 
bishop Parker  terms,  "  their  Germanical  natures,"  or 
deeply  imbued  with  the  doctrines  of  the  Swiss  ;  with 
a  preference  for  Presbyterianism,  and  a  deep-rooted  sen- 
timent that  the  English  Reformation  had  not  gone  far 
enough.  Every  vestige  of  ceremonial  they  condemned 
as  a  badge  of  papacy,  or  of  what  they  considered  as 
bad,  Lutheranism.     They  objected  to  set  forms  of 


AND  THE  RISE  OF  PURITANISM. 


359 


prayer,  to  the  singing  the  service,  to  all  instrumental 
accompaniments,  to  the  sign  of  the  Cross,  kneeling  at 
the  Holy  Communion,  bowing  at  the  name  of  Jesus,  and 
the  ring  in  marriage.  Nor  were  they  all  of  one  mind  : 
there  were  various  heterogeneous  sects,  with  no  other 
cohesion  than  jealousy  of  the  Church ;  there  were 
Presbyterians,  who  would  abolish  episcopacy ;  there 
were  the  Brownists,  who  were  afterwards  merged  in 
the  Independents,  or  Congregationalists,  objecting 
alike  to  Presbyterianism  and  Episcopacy  ;  sects  ready 
to  fly  at  each  other's  throats,  as  soon  as  one  or  the 
other  of  them  attained  preeminence,  and  each  apply- 
ing, in  their  time  of  need,  to  the  Church,  which  they 
had  done  their  best  to  pull  down,  for  succour  against 
the  others. 

With  such  revolutionary  tendencies,  the  hatred  they 
bore  to  the  Church  soon  extended  to  the  Crown.  Early 
in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  the  Puritans  formed  a  ma- 
jority in  the  House  of  Commons ;  and  had  it  not 
been  for  the  worldly  wisdom  of  the  queen,  whose  hand 
was  always  kept  on  the  national  pulse,  the  contest 
which  was  thus  put  off  till  the  reign  of  Charles,  would 
have  occurred  in  her  reign.  The  Commons  had  the 
power,  which  they  afterwards  used  to  such  terrible 
purpose,  of  withholding  the  supplies  ;  and  the  last  Par- 
liament of  her  reign  shewed  that,  if  necessary,  they 
were  ready  to  use  that  power.  In  matters  of  religion, 
she  silenced  Puritans  and  Romanists  alike ;  but  when 
she  saw  the  necessity  of  yielding,  she  yielded  grace- 
fully, and  so  the  danger  was  postponed  for  a  fu- 
ture day. 

To  understand  the  Puritan  of  those  days,  we  must 
have  recourse  to  the  inimitable  description  of  Lord 


36o 


THE  ROMAN  SCHISM, 


Macaulay^  His  gait,  his  garb,  his  lank  hair,  the  sour 
solemnity  of  his  face,  the  upturned  whites  of  his  eyes, 
the  nasal  twang,  and,  above  all,  his  peculiar  dialect, 
marked  him  out  from  other  men.  His  malignant  dis- 
position rendered  the  New  Testament  little  suited  to 
his  feelings  ;  hence  he  baptized  his  children,  not  by 
the  names  of  Christian  saints,  but  of  Hebrew  patriarchs 
and  warriors.  "  The  prophet  who  hewed  in  pieces 
a  captive  king ;  the  rebel  general,  who  gave  the  blood 
of  a  queen  to  the  dogs ;  the  matron  who,  in  defiance 
of  plighted  troth,  drove  the  nail  into  the  brain  of  the 
fugitive  ally,  who  had  just  fed  at  her  board,  and  was 
sleeping  under  the  shadow  of  her  tent,  were  proposed 
as  models  for  Christians,  suffering  under  the  tyranny 
of  princes  and  prelates."  The  dress,  the  deportment, 
the  amusements  of  this  rigid  sect,  were  regulated  by 
those  of  the  Pharisees,  who  taunted  the  Redeemer 
with  being  a  Sabbath-breaker  and  a  wine-bibber.  It 
was  sin  to  hang  garlands  on  a  May-pole,  to  drink 
a  friend's  health,  to  fly  a  hawk,  to  play  at  chess,  to 
read  the  "  Faery  Queen."  They  turned  the  weekly 
festival  by  which  the  Church  had  from  time  imme- 
morial commemorated  the  resurrection  of  our  Lord, 
into  a  Jewish  Sabbath.  Some  had  scruples  about 
teaching  the  Latin  Grammar,  because  in  it  occurred 
the  names  of  Mars,  Bacchus,  and  Apollo.  They  ob- 
jected to  baiting  bears,  not  because  it  gave  pain  to  the 
bears,  but  because  it  afforded  pleasure  to  the  spec- 
tator ;  the  fine  arts  were  discouraged,  organs  were  su- 
perstitious; of  the  finest  paintings,  half  were  idolatrous, 
the  other  half  indecent. 

A  foolish  and  thankless  attempt  had  been  made  to 
'  Vol.  i.  p.  80. 


AND  THE  RISE  OF  PURITANISM. 


361 


satisfy  them,  when  the  Prayer- Book  was  modified  to 
meet  their  views.    Nothing  would  content  them  :  they 
required,  Neal  tells  us,  the  pulling  down  of  "  all  ca- 
thedral churches,  where  the  service  of  God  is  griev- 
ously abused  by  piping  with  organs,  singing,  ringing 
and  trowling  of  Psalms,  with  the  squeaking  of  chanting 
choristers,  disguised,  as  are  all  the  rest,  in  white  sur- 
plices, some  in  corner-caps  and  filthy  copes,  imitating 
the  manner  and  fashion  of  Antichrist,  the  Pope."  All 
they  wanted  was  a  leader,  to  break  out  into  open  hos- 
tility.   Such  a  man  presented  himself  in  the  person  of 
Thomas  Cartwright,  who,  having  been  Margaret  Pro- 
fessor of  Divinity  at  Cambridge,  was,  when  Dr.  Whit- 
gift,  the  future  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  was  Vice- 
Chancellor,  expelled  from  the  University  for  his  pecu- 
liar tenets  on  Church  discipline.  Cartwright,  on  leaving 
Cambridge,  became  indoctrinated  on  the  Continent  in 
the  views  of  Beza,  the  successor  of  Calvin,  and  re- 
turned to  England,  in  1570,  with  a  bitter  hostility  to 
the  English  Church.    Under  him  the  first  organised 
schism  took  place,  and  the  first  Presbytery  was  esta- 
blished at  Wandsworth  in  1573;  eleven  elders,  en- 
titled "  the  Orders  of  Wandsworth,"  were  chosen  ;  and 
the  Genevan  service-book,  and  a  Presbyterian  form  of 
government,  were  adopted.    Other  Presbyteries  were 
set  up  in  the  neighbouring  counties  ;  in  a  few  years 
they  were  to  be  found  in  Warwickshire  and  North- 
amptonshire;  and  not  long  afterwards  in  Lancashire 
and  Cheshire.    Sir  Walter  Raleigh  declared  in  Par- 
liament that  there  were  20,000  separatists  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  London,  Essex,  and  Norfolk;  and  in 
1584,  bills  were  introduced,  although  without  effect, 
into  Parliament,  praying  for  a  reform  of  Church  abuses, 
and  "  to  establish  a  Presbytery,  or  eldership  in  each 


362 


THE  ROMAN  SCHISM, 


parish,  together  with  the  minister,  to  determine  the 
spiritual  business  of  the  parish  ^"  The  Presbyterians 
formed  themselves  into  associates,  called  "  Prophesy- 
ings  of  the  Clergy,"  which  were  presided  over  by 
a  Moderator ;  these  many  of  the  clergy,  and  some 
of  the  bishops,  to  the  great  dislike  of  Parker,  fa- 
voured ;  and  they  received  also  the  countenance  of 
Leicester, 

Parker  died  a.d.  1575.  No  one  could  have  ruled 
the  Church  better  than  he,  few  so  well,  in  such  difficult 
times.  During  his  last  years,  what  between  Romanism 
and  Puritanism,  and  his  endeavours  to  preserve  the 
Catholicity  of  the  Church  from  falling  back  into  me- 
diaeval error,  or  drifting  forward  into  licentiousness 
and  unbelief ;  whilst  the  capricious  temper  of  the 
queen  now  led  her  one  way,  now  another  \  according 
as  she  listened  to  the  fascinations  of  Leicester,  or  to 
the  voice  of  her  better  conscience ;  the  life  of  Parker, 
who  never  received  from  his  suffragans  that  support 
which  he  had  a  right  to  expect,  must  have  been  full 
of  difficulty.  The  queen  objected  to  the  "  Prophesy- 
ings,"  and  bade  Parker  to  suppress  them ;  the  Bishop 
of  Norwich,  their  chief  favourer,  resisted  the  Arch- 
bishop, and  appealed  to  Leicester.  Leicester  supported 
him ;  the  queen  vacillated,  and  only  gave  Parker  a 
lukewarm  support.  Parker  was  at  the  time  suffering 
under  a  painful  disease,  which  the  physicians  told  him 
must  terminate  fatally.  It  must  be  mentioned,  to  the 
queen's  credit,  that,  notwithstanding  all  Leicester's 
attempts  to  damage  him,  she  retained  to  the  end 
her  esteem  for  the  faithful  friend  of  her  childhood. 

•  Neal's  Puritans,  i.  398. 

'  Neal  describes  her  as  sometimes  "tamquam  ovis,"  at  others,  "  tam- 
quam  indomita  juvenca."    (I.  5.) 


AND  THE  RISE  OF  PURITANISM. 


Sometimes  her  dislike  of  clerical  marriages  made  her 
forget  herself;  on  one  occasion,  in  the  presence  of 
Parker,  she  addressed  his  wife,  "  Madam  I  may  not 
call  you,  and  mistress  I  am  ashamed  to  call  you  :" 
yet,  fickle  as  she  was,  she  on  the  whole  remained  true 
to  him,  and  paid  him  a  visit  towards  the  end  of  his 
life  at  his  palace  at  Canterbury, 

Parker  was  succeeded  by  a  very  different  man, 
Grindall  (immortalized  by  Spencer  as  "Algrind"), 
who  had  been  Bishop  of  London  and  Archbishop 
of  York.  Unlike  Parker,  who  had  remained  in  Eng- 
land during  the  reign  of  Mary,  Grindall  had  fled  the 
country,  and  so  became  mixed  up  with  the  foreign 
Reformers,  and  was  the  intimate  friend  of  Bucer :  he 
brought  back  with  him  the  Puritanical  dislike  for  the 
vestments;  as  early  as  1561  Cecil  had  written  of  him, 
that  "he  winketh  at  Schismatics  and  Anabaptists;" 
and  so  his  primacy  was  marked  with  a  relaxation  of 
Church  discipline,  and  an  open  sympathy  with  Puri- 
tanism. 

There  are,  however,  some  points  in  Grindall's  cha- 
racter in  which  he  contrasts  favourably  with  the  more 
timid  disposition  of  Parker.  The  Crown  had  great 
power  over  the  Church  lands ;  the  queen  frequently 
compelled  the  Church  to  exchange  its  lands  for  Crown 
lands,  always,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  to  the  advantage 
of  the  latter.  Grindall  ventured,  although  in  vain,  to 
expostulate  with  her.  On  another  occasion  the  queen 
required  the  archbishop  to  suppress  "  the  Prophesy- 
ings."  It  is  difficult  to  understand  exactly  what  was 
the  great  harm  in  these  prophesyings ;  at  any  rate, 
Grindall  approved  of  them,  and  so  he  declined  to 
comply  with  the  mandate  of  the  imperious  queen,  who 
was  always  too  ready  to  usurp  the  authority  of  the 


3^4 


THE  ROMAN  SCHISM, 


Church.  His  letter  to  the  queen  points  a  useful  les- 
son for  all  times ;  he  confessed  that  he  preferred  to 
offend  the  earthly  rather  than  the  heavenly  majesty, 
and  asked  her  to  consider  two  petitions  :  "  The 
first  is,  that  you  refer  all  these  ecclesiastical  matters 
which  touch  religion,  or  the  doctrine  and  discipline 
of  the  Church,  unto  the  bishops  and  divines  of  your 
realm,  according  to  the  example  of  all  godly  Christian 
emperors  and  princes  of  all  ages.  .  .  .  The  second  peti- 
tion I  have  to  make  to  your  majesty  is  this  ;  that  when 
you  deal  in  matters  of  faith  and  religion,  or  matters 
that  touch  the  Church  of  Christ,  which  is  His  spouse, 
bought  with  so  dear  a  price,  you  would  not  use  to 
pronounce  so  resolutely  and  peremptorily,  quasi  ex 
auctoritate,  as  ye  may  do  in  civil  and  extern  matters  ; 
but  always  remember  that  in  God's  causes  the  will  of 
God,  and  not  the  will  of  any  earthly  creature,  is  to 
take  place.  .  .  .  Remember,  madam,  that  you  are  a 
mortal  creature,  .  .  .  and  although  you  are  a  mighty 
prince,  yet  remember  that  He  which  dwelleth  in  hea- 
ven is  mightier." 

The  queen  ordered  him  before  the  Star  Chamber, 
and  wished  that  he  should  be  deposed  ;  but  to  such 
an  unjust  course  even  Leicester  was  opposed,  and  the 
queen  reluctantly  gave  way ;  but  he  was  suspended 
from  his  office.  About  five  years  afterwards,  in  1582, 
when  he  was  in  extreme  old  age  and  growing  blind, 
the  suspension  was  removed.  The  next  year  he  be- 
came totally  blind,  and  the  queen  insisted  on  his  re- 
signation, and  determined  to  appoint  Whitgift,  who, 
however,  refused  to  accept  the  primacy  during  Grin- 
dall's  lifetime.  Grindall  only  requested  to  be  allowed 
to  retain  his  see  till  Michaelmas,  as  he  had  some  bene- 
factions which  he  was  desirous  of  meeting  at  that 


AND  THE  RISE  OF  PURITANISM, 


time ;  the  queen  would  only  allow  him  till  Lady  Day ; 
but  while  the  negotiations  were  pending,  the  blind 
old  man  died,  and  was  thus  released  from  his  cruel 
persecution. 

His  successor,  Whitgift,  1583 — 1604,  whose  vigor- 
ous enforcement  of  discipline  rescued  the  Church  for 
a  time  from  Puritanism,  but  who  was  tainted  with 
Erastianism  and  doctrinal  Calvinism,  tried  to  impose 
upon  the  Church  nine  Articles,  known  as  the  "  Lam- 
beth Articles,"  which  asserted  the  most  objectionable 
of  Calvinistic  doctrines,  such  as  Predestination,  Repro- 
bation, Assurance,  and  the  denial  of  man's  free-will : 
but  those  Articles  never  received  the  sanction  of  Con- 
vocation, and  when  presented  by  Lord  Burghley,  who 
greatly  objected  to  them,  to  the  queen,  they  were 
strongly  condemned  by  her ;  so  that  they  were  never 
in  any  sense  binding  on  the  Church,  whilst  they  re- 
flect any  thing  but  credit  on  the  doctrine  and  cha- 
racter of  Whitgift. 

During  this  reign  there  began  to  spring  up  that 
race  of  theologians  who  so  successfully  vindicated  the 
Catholicity  of  the  English  Church  against  the  attacks 
of  Romanists  and  Puritans.  Against  the  former,  the 
first  was  Jewel,  who  was  educated  at  Corpus  Christi 
College,  Oxford,  and  in  1562  published  the  "Apology 
for  the  Church  of  England,"  in  Latin ;  a  work  which 
was  translated  into  English  by  Lady  Bacon,  the  wife  of 
the  Lord  keeper,  and  mother  of  the  famous  Lord  Bacon, 
as  well  as  into  Italian,  French,  German,  Spanish,  Dutch, 
Greek,  and  Welsh.  During  the  reign  of  Mary,  he,  as 
a  friend  of  Peter  Martyr,  was  marked  out  for  destruc- 
tion, to  escape  which  he  renounced  his  adherence  to 
the  reformed  Church  ;  but  soon  repenting,  he  escaped 
to  Zurich,  where  he  remained,  during  Mary's  reign, 


366 


THE  ROMAN  SCHISM, 


in  the  house  of  Peter  Martyr.  Returning  to  England 
after  her  death,  he  brought  back  with  him  some  of 
the  tenets  of  the  foreign  Reformers,  and  an  objection 
to  the  vestments ;  he  held  that  the  Church  of  Engrland 
was  Scriptural  and  primitive,  "  the  doctrine  is  every- 
where most  pure,  but  as  to  ceremonies  or  maskings 
there  is  a  little  too  much  fooling  "  ;"  but  being  appointed 
Bishop  of  Salisbury  in  1560,  he  preached  on  the  i8th 
of  June,  vested  in  a  Bishop's  robes,  a  sermon  at  St, 
Paul's  Cross.  In  that  sermon  he  repeated  the  chal- 
lenge to  the  Romanists  which  he  had  made  in  a  for- 
mer sermon.  He  enumerated  twenty-seven  points,  and 
said  "  if  any  learned  man  of  all  our  adversaries  would 
bring  any  one  sufficient  sentence  out  of  any  old  Ca- 
tholic doctor  or  father,  or  out  of  any  old  general  coun- 
cil, or  out  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  of  God,  or  any  one 
example  of  the  Primitive  Church,  that  the  Romish 
doctrine  was  the  true  one,  he  would  be  content  to 
yield  and  subscribe."  The  challenge  led  to  a  con- 
troversy between  him  and  Hardinge,  a  prebendary  of 
his  own  cathedral,  who,  like  himself,  had  lapsed  into 
Romanism  under  Mary ;  it  is  to  this  controversy  that 
we  owe  his  "  Apology,"  written  under  the  patron- 
age of  Parker  (although  there  were  many  things  in 
it  of  which  he  could  not  have  approved),  and  with 
the  authority  of  the  queen.  The  work  was  a  great 
one,  and  was  brought  under  the  consideration  of  the 
Council  of  Trent,  although  an  attempt  to  invest  it 
with  an  ecclesiastical  authority  was  resisted  by  the 
English  Church. 

The  Church  owes  a  great  debt  to  Jewel,  since  it 
was  through  his  liberality  and  influence  that  the  "ju- 
dicious Hooker,"  the  greatest  writer  of  the  sixteenth 

"  Jewel's  Letters. 


AND  THE  RISE  OF  PURITANISM.  367 

century,  who  was  born,  in  1554,  of  poor  parents  at 
Heavitree,  near  Exeter,  was  sent  to  Oxford ;  of  whose 
great  work,  "  The  Laws  of  Ecclesiastical  Polity,"  Pope 
Clement  VIII.  well  said,  "  his  books  will  get  reverence 
by  age,  for  there  is  in  them  such  seeds  of  eternity  that 
they  shall  continue  till  the  last  fire  shall  devour  all 
learning."    Whitgift  had  for  some  time  carried  on  the 
contest  with  Cartwright,  but  on  his  elevation  to  Can- 
terbury, his  mantle  fell  on  Hooker.    On  the  death  of 
Elvie,  Hooker,  through  the  influence  of  Sandys,  Bishop 
of  London,  was  appointed  to  the  mastership  of  the 
Temple,  Lord  Burleigh  being  desirous  that  his  chaplain 
Travers,  the  lecturer  at  the  Temple,  who  at  that  time, 
next  to  Cartwright,  was  the  leader  of  the  Puritans, 
should  be  appointed.    Travers,  however,  had  been 
ordained  by  a  Presbyterian  congregation  at  Antwerp, 
and  therefore  Archbishop  Whitgift  objected  to  the 
appointment ;  Hooker  had  Travers  as  his  colleague 
at  the  Temple,  an  attractive  preacher  and  a  popu- 
lar man,  so  that  it  was  said  "pure  Canterbury  was 
preached  in  the  morning,  and  Geneva  in  the  after- 
noon :"  Travers  making  a  point  of  refuting  in  the 
afternoon  whatever  Hooker  had  preached  in  the  morn- 
ing.   The  archbishop  silenced  Travers,  on  the  ground 
that  he  was  not  properly  ordained  :  Travers  addressed 
"a  supplication  to  the  Privy  Council  :"  to  this  appeal 
we  are  indebted  for  Hooker's  great  work,  the  first  four 
books  of  which  appeared  in  1594  ;  in  the  same  year  he 
was  appointed  to  the  living  of  Bishopsbourne,  where 
he  lived  till  his  death  in  1600,  in  his  forty-sixth  year, 
and  where  he  published  his  fifth  book,  the  remain- 
ing books  being  posthumous. 

The  controversy  carried  on  between  Whitgift  and 
Cartwright,  and  Hooker  and  Travers,  was  continued 


368 


THE  ROMAN   SCHISM,  ETC. 


by  Dr.  Bridger,  Dean  of  Salisbury,  in  a  work  which 
called  forth  the  famous  Martin  Marprelate  Tracts, 
certain  scurrilous  publications  originating,  probably, 
with  a  Welshman  named  Penry,  which  were  pub- 
lished through  a  moveable  press  set  up  first  at  Moul- 
sey,  and  thence  conveyed  to  Faussley  in  Northamp- 
tonshire, then  to  Coventry,  and  which  was  ultimately 
brought  to  light  by  the  Earl  of  Derby  at  Manchester.  . 
The  tracts,  though  directed  at  first  against  the  bishops, 
especially  Whitgift,  Aylmer,  the  successor  of  Sandys 
at  London,  Cooper,  Bishop  of  Winchester,  and  Wick- 
ham,  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  the  great  objects  of  Puritani- 
cal hatred,  were  afterwards  levelled  against  the  queen 
and  her  courtiers. 


CHAPTER  V. 


THE  GROWTH  OF  PURITANISM.  JAMES  I. 

H ROUGH  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  Puritanism  had 


been  gaining  strength,  but  had  been  kept  tolerably 
under  control ;  and,  although  treated  with  great  se- 
verity, had  refrained  from  any  systematic  opposition 
to  the  government.  With  the  dynasty  of  the  Stuarts 
commenced  even  higher  claims  for  the  royal  preroga- 
tive than  under  the  Tudors  ;  James  formally  enunciated 
that  doctrine  of  the  divine  right  of  kings,  which  was  to 
prove  so  fatal  to  his  family,  and  which  was  to  be  at 
last  terminated  by  the  landing  of  William  of  Orange ; 
he  also  advocated  the  divine  right  of  bishops,  because 
the  bishops  upheld  the  divine  right  of  kings.  Hence 
the  unpopularity  of  the  throne  caused  the  unpopularity 
of  the  Church  ;  henceforth  the  cause  of  Puritanism  be- 
came identified  with  the  cause  of  civil  liberty,  and  the 
cause  of  the  Church  with  the  cause  of  tyranny. 

Both  Romanists  and  Puritans  looked  forward  to 
the  accession  of  James  with  hopeful  expectations ;  the 
hopes  of  the  former  being  founded  on  the  religion 
of  his  mother,  those  of  the  latter  on  his  subscription 
to  the  Scottish  Covenant.  Unfortunately  for  the  Pu- 
ritans, Puritanism  does  not  improve  upon  acquaint- 
ance, and  James  had  already  seen  enough  of  it  in 
Scotland  ;  the  thraldom  which  he  had  lived  under  from 
the  Presbyterians  had  grown  too  hateful  for  him  to 
wish  for  its  repetition  in  his  new  kingdom.  However, 
the  uncertainty  did  not  last  long.  On  the  death  of 
Elizabeth,  Dr.  Neville,  Dean  of  Canterbury,  who  con- 
veyed to  James  the  congratulations  of  the  English 


B  b 


370       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


Church,  soon  returned  with  the  decisive  answer  of 
his  determination  to  uphold  the  Church  as  Elizabeth 
had  left  it,  and  of  his  anxiety  for  its  welfare. 

But  the  Puritans  did  not  give  the  new  king  long 
breathing-time.  On  his  way  to  London  they  presented 
him  with  the  "  Millenary  Petition,"  so-called  because 
it  purported  to  be  signed  by  i,ooo,  although  it  was 
really  signed  by  753,  ministers,  calling  themselves 
clergymen  of  the  Church  of  England,  "  groaning  under 
a  common  burden  of  human  rites  and  ceremonies." 

The  king  declared  his  adherence  to  the  constitution 
of  the  English  Church  as  being  primitive  and  agree- 
able to  God's  Word  ;  but,  at  the  same  time,  he  was 
willing  to  listen  to  reasonable  objections,  and  for  this 
purpose  he  appointed  a  meeting  of  the  Church  and 
Puritan  divines  at  Hampton  Court  in  January,  1604. 
On  the  part  of  the  Church  nine  bishops  were  ap- 
pointed ;  amongst  them  were  Whitgift,  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury ;  Bancroft,  Bishop  of  London,  who,  on  ac- 
count of  the  Archbishop's  great  age,  took  the  lead ; 
Matthew  of  Durham,  and  Bilson  of  Winchester. 
Amongst  the  other  clergy  were  Andrewes,  the  deepest 
theologian  of  the  day  ;  Barlow,  Dean  of  Christ  Church, 
the  chronicler  of  the  Conference  ;  Overall,  Dean  of 
St.  Paul's  ;  and  Dr.  Field,  author  of  "  The  Treatise  on 
the  Church."  On  the  part  of  the  Puritans,  the  depu- 
ties were  Reynolds,  President  of  Corpus,  and  Sparkes, 
from  Oxford ;  the  former  reputed  the  greatest  scholar 
of  the  day,  and  the  equal  of  Bellarmine  in  controver- 
sial theology;  and  Chaderton  and  Knewstubbs  from 
Cambridge ;  all  of  them  men  of  great  learning,  but 
unfortunately  nominated  by  the  king ;  it  is  unfortunate 
also  that  their  number  was  so  small,  as  compared  with 
their  opponents  ;  it  is  certain,  owing  perhaps  to  the 


THE  GROWTH  OF  PURITANISM. 


great  learning  opposed  to  them,  that  they  feebly  sup- 
ported their  reputation. 

The  Conference  lasted  three  days.  On  the  first 
day,  the  king  and  the  Church  party  alone  attended  with 
closed  doors  ;  for  the  king,  who  had  been  brought  up 
a  Presbyterian,  wished  to  consult  the  clergy  as  to  the 
doctrine  and  discipline  of  the  Church.  That  James 
was  favourable  to  the  Church  we  have  his  own  words 
and  works ;  although,  says  Andrewes,  Bishop  of  Win- 
chester, on  the  first  day  he  did  "  for  five  hours  won- 
derfully play  the  Puritan,"  so  that  it  is  clear  his  pre- 
ference arose  from  conviction.  The  first  matter  dis- 
cussed was  the  Prayer- Book,  with  especial  regard  to 
Confirmation,  Absolution,  and  Baptism  by  women. 
With  regard  to  Confirmation,  the  bishops  declared 
Baptism  was  not  considered  incomplete  without  it ;  but 
that  it  was  the  Laying-on  of  hands,  established  on  the 
authority  of  the  Apostles  and  the  primitive  Church. 
Bancroft  defended  the  Absolution,  not  only  in  the 
daily  prayer,  but  in  the  offices  for  the  Communion  and 
the  Visitation  of  the  Sick.  It  was  agreed  that,  for  the 
present,  it  should  be  left  as  it  was  ;  but  on  another  oc- 
casion it  should  be  determined  whether  the  words, 
"  remission  of  sins,"  should  not  be  added  to  the  rubric. 
As  to  lay-baptism,  the  Archbishop  stated  it  was  lawful, 
but  rarely  used ;  others  said  it  was  reasonable,  the 
minister  not  being  of  the  essence  of  the  Sacrament  ; 
but  the  king  decided  it  should  be  a  matter  of  con- 
sideration whether  the  word  "curate,"  or  "lawful  min- 
ister," should  not  be  inserted  in  the  rubric  for  private 
baptism. 

On  the  second  day,  Jan.  16,  the  Puritans  under 
Reynolds,  stated  their  objections  under  four  heads  : 
(i.)  Of  Doctrine. — They  desired,  amongst  other  minor 

B  b  2 


372        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

points,  the  Lambeth  Articles'"  to  be  incorporated  in 
the  thirty-nine  ^ ;  that  some  of  the  latter,  e.g.  the 
passage  in  the  sixteenth,  "after  we  have  received 
the  Holy  Ghost,  we  may  fall  from  grace ;"  in  the 
twenty -third,  as  to  any  one  preaching  or  adminis- 
tering the  Sacraments  before  he  is  called  ;  might 
be  expunged,  or  altered  :  but  when  they  made  their 
objection  that  Confirmation  should  be  performed  by 
a  priest,  as  well  as  a  bishop,  the  king  spoke  his  fa- 
vourite aphorism,  "No  bishop,  no  king,"  and  was  en- 
tirely opposed  to  them  ;  whilst  the  other  objections 
the  bishops  met  to  the  king's  complete  satisfaction. 
Reynolds  next  objected  that  the  Church  Catechism 
was  too  short,  (to  this  objection  we  are  indebted  to 
the  introduction  of  the  latter  part  of  the  Catechism 
as  to  the  Sacraments,)  whilst  that  of  Dean  Nowell 
was  too  long ;  he  also  requested  a  new  translation  of 
the  Bible.  Both  of  these  points  the  king  granted 
conditionally  ;  whilst,  as  to  the  better  observance  of 
the  Lord's  day,  both  parties  were  equally  agreed. 

(2.)  As  regards  the  Ministers  of  the  Chztrch. — Rey- 
nolds complained  of  the  system  of  pluralities,  and 
requested  that  all  parishes  should  have  preaching  min- 

•  These  were  the  nine  Articles  arranged  at  a  meeting  of  Calvinistic 
divines,  held  in  1595  at  Lambeth  Palace,  under  Archbishop  Whitgift. 
The  first  four  assert  the  Calvinistic  doctrine  of  Predestination  and  Repro- 
bation ;  the  two  next  that  of  Final  Perseverance  ;  the  three  last  that  of 
Particular  Redemption,  and  a  denial  of  man's  free  will.  Archbishop 
Whitgift  approved  of  them  under  the  hope  of  conciliating  the  Puritans, 
and  quieting  the  controversy  on  Predestination,  which  then,  under  the 
leadership  of  Dr.  Whitaker,  the  Regius  Professor  of  Divinity,  on  the  one 
side,  and  Dr.  Baron,  the  Margaret  Professor,  on  the  other,  was  agitating 
the  University  of  Cambridge.  But  as  we  saw  in  the  previous  chapter, 
they  were  never  in  any  way  binding  on  the  Church. 

This  was  happily  not  effected :  but  they  were  incorporated  in  the 
Irish  Articles  of  161 5:  these  Articles,  however,  the  Irish  Church  rejected 
in  1635  for  the  Thirty-nine  Articles. 


THE  GROWTH  OF  PURITANISM. 


373 


isters.  Bancroft,  in  reply,  requested  that  they  might 
also  have  a  praying  ministry,  and  humbly  requested 
that  as  pulpit  harangues  were  often  dangerous,  and 
pulpits  were  made  pasquils,  where  every  discontented 
fellow  could  traduce  his  superiors,  the  number  of  ho- 
milies might  be  increased.  As  to  pluralities,  the  king 
promised  to  refer  the  matter  to  the  bishops. 

(3.)  The  revising  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer. — 
Under  this  head,  objections  were  raised  to  the  mode 
of  subscription  to  the  Articles,  to  the  reading  the  Apo- 
cryphal Lessons,  the  sign  of  the  cross  in  baptism,  the 
surplice  and  other  vestments,  the  marriage  ring,  and 
the  churching  of  women;  objections  which  the  king 
dismissed  as  frivolous. 

(4.)  Church  Government. — The  question  of  eccle- 
siastical censures  having  been  arranged  between  the 
bishops  and  the  king,  Reynolds  requested  that  diocesan 
assemblies  should  be  held  for  the  establishment  of 
prophesyings,  which  Elizabeth  had  forbidden  as  being 
seminaries  of  schism.  This  greatly  excited  the  anger 
of  the  king,  which  he  said  was  nothing  but  a  secret 
design  for  establishing  a  Scotch  presbytery,  on  which 
he  reflected  in  strong  and  offensive  language  ;  he  said 
he  could  now  understand  the  Puritan  objections,  for  if 
the  bishops  were  out  and  they  in,  he  knew  "  what 
would  become  of  the  Royal  Supremacy,  for, '  no  bishop, 
no  king.'"  James  considered  himself  the  "greatest 
master  of  kingcraft  that  ever  lived " ;"  he  certainly 
understood  the  nature  and  pretension  of  Puritanism ; 
he  now  told  the  Puritans  that  they  must  either  con- 
form, or  else  "  I  will  harrie  them  out  of  the  land ;  or 
else  do  worse,  only  hang  them,  that's  all." 

On  the  third  day  of  the  Conference,  Reynolds  and 

Macaulay,  Essays,  Lord  Nugent's  Memorials  of  Hampden. 


374       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


the  Puritans  were  summoned  merely  to  hear  the  de- 
cision at  which  the  king,  by  the  advice  of  the  bishops, 
had  arrived.  The  king  told  them  their  scruples  were 
frivolous  :  if,  therefore,  they  were  honest  men,  they 
would  conform ;  if  not,  they  had  better  leave  the 
Church.  This  result  not  being  favourable  to  them, 
one  of  them,  Chaderton,  fell  on  his  knees,  and  asked 
that  some  godly  ministers  of  Lancashire  might  be 
spared  the  surplice  and  the  cross  ;  whereupon  another 
request  was  made  by  Knewstubbs,  for  certain  min- 
isters in  Suffolk ;  but  this  was  more  than  the  king 
could  tolerate.  "  This,"  he  said,  "  is  the  Scottish  way, 
but  I  will  have  none  of  this  arguing ;  therefore,  let 
them  conform,  and  that  quickly,  or  else  they  that  are 
of  an  obstinate  and  turbulent  spirit,  I  will  have  them 
enforced  to  conformity."  The  king  issued  a  procla- 
mation that  he  would  make  no  further  concession,  and 
required  all  his  subjects  to  conform  to  the  Liturgy. 

One  result  of  the  Hampton  Court  Conference  was, 
that  a  few  alterations  were  made  in  the  Prayer- Book  : 
(i.)  The  words,  "  Or  remission  of  sins,"  were  added  in 
the  Absolution  ;  (2.)  The  prayer  for  the  royal  family 
was  placed  at  the  end  of  the  Litany,  and  also  some  oc- 
casional thanksgivings ;  (3.)  Two  slight  verbal  changes 
were  made  in  the  beginning  of  the  Gospels  for  Sec- 
ond Sunday  after  Easter,  and  Twentieth  Sunday  after 
Trinity ;  (4.)  Some  alterations  were  made  in  the  ru- 
brics for  Private  Baptism  ;  (5.)  An  explanation  of  Con- 
firmation was  given ;  (6.)  The  concluding  part  in  the 
Church  Catechism,  about  the  Sacraments,  was  added, 
probably  by  Overall  ;  (7.)  Some  slight  changes  were 
made  in  the  Calendar. 

Another  result  was  the  publication  of  the  Canons 
of  1604.    Convocation,  which  (Whitgift  having  lately 


THE  GROWTH  OF  PURITANISM. 


375 


died)  assembled  under  Bancroft,  Bishop  of  London, 
proceeded  to  compile  a  digest  of  canons  collected  out 
of  the  articles,  injunctions,  and  synodical  acts  of  the 
two  previous  reigns,  entirely  opposed  to  Puritanical 
principles.  These  canons  of  1604,  numbering  141, 
are  still  in  certain  force,  and  when  not  opposed  to 
the  statute  or  common  law,  form  the  basis  of  eccle- 
siastical law  at  the  present  day ;  but  as  they  were 
never  confirmed  by  Act  of  Parliament,  although  autho- 
rized by  the  king's  letters  patent  under  the  Great  Seal, 
the  king  commanding  that  every  priest  should  annu- 
ally read  them  in  church  during  divine  service,  yet 
they  are  not  held  in  law  to  be  binding  on  the  laity 
as  they  are  on  the  clergy  ^ 

A  still  more  important  result  was  the  production  of 
the  English  Bible  now  in  use.  In  July  of  1604,  ^1"^^ 
king  appointed  a  commission  of  sixty-four  persons, 
divided  into  six  committees,  two  of  which  sat  at 
Oxford,  two  at  Cambridge,  and  two  at  Westminster ; 
with  instructions  to  make  none  but  necessary  altera- 
tions in  the  Bishops'  Bible ;  to  append  only  such  notes 
as  might  be  required  for  the  literal  explanation  of  He- 
brew and  Greek  words,  and  as  few  marginal  notes  as 
possible.  The  work  was  begun  in  1607,  ^rid  finished 
in  161 1  ;  the  result  was  our  present  translation  of  the 
Bible,  which,  if  it  has  imperfections,  is  probably  the 
best  translation  in  existence. 

The  Romanists,  equally  with  the  Puritans,  were 
dissatisfied  with  James  :  they  did  not  think  that  the 
son  of  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  would  continue  against 
them  the  severities  of  Elizabeth.  James  was  earnestly 
desirous  of  uniting  the  Roman  and  the  Anglican 

Canon  twenty-four  prescribes  that  Copes  are  to  be  worn  in  cathe- 
drals by  those  who  administer  the  Holy  Communion. 


376       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


Churches,  but  this  could  only  be  done  by  the  former 
renouncing  the  supremacy  of  the  Pope,  and  his  power 
to  dethrone  princes  ;  till  they  were  willing  to  do  this, 
they  had  nothing  to  expect  from  his  clemency,  and 
before  the  first  Parliament  met,  he  repeated  the  pro- 
clamation of  Elizabeth,  ordering  all  Jesuits  and  Romish 
priests  to  leave  the  country. 

A  plot,  known  as  the  Gunpowder  Plot,  was  devised 
for  the  destruction  of  the  king,  the  Prince  of  Wales, 
and  the  two  Houses  of  Parliament,  on  their  meeting  on 
Nov.  5,  1605,  under  the  idea  that  thus  the  principal 
enemies  of  Rome  would  be  removed,  and  the  nation 
restored  to  Romanism.  With  this  view,  Catesby  and 
Percy,  and  their  followers,  hired  a  cellar  beneath  the 
houses  of  parliament,  where  they  concealed  thirty-six 
barrels  of  gunpowder.  The  discovery  of  the  plot  has 
been  attributed  to  Henry  IV.  of  France,  who  learnt  it 
from  the  Jesuits ;  at  any  rate,  on  the  eve  of  its  execu- 
tion, an  anonymous  letter  was  received  by  Lord  Mont- 
eagle,  which  led  to  the  detection  of  the  conspirators, 
who  were  overtaken  in  Staffordshire,  and  the  ring- 
leaders either  killed  in  their  attempt  to  escape,  or 
executed  afterwards.  At  the  opening  of  Parliament, 
James  exculpated  the  Romanists  as  a  body  from  com- 
plicity;  but  as  four  Jesuits,  Garnett,  the  Provincial  of 
the  Jesuits  in  England  (who  admitted  his  knowledge, 
but  excused  himself  as  having  learnt  the  plot  under 
the  seal  of  confession),  Oldcorn,  Gerard,  and  Green- 
way  were  known  to  be  connected  with  it,  it  would 
be  a  false  feeling  of  charity  to  try  to  screen  that 
order. 

The  immediate  consequence  of  the  plot  was  to  give 
rise  to  the  "  oath  of  allegiance,"  which  differed  from 
the  oath  of  supremacy,  inasmuch  as  it  required  a  de- 


THE  GROWTH  OF  PURITANISM. 


377 


claratlon  which  it  was  thought  might  readily  be  sub- 
scribed by  Romanists,  against  the  doctrine  that  princes, 
excommunicated  by  the  Pope,  might  be  deposed  or 
murdered  by  their  subjects.  The  oath  was  taken 
by  most  of  the  laity,  both  amongst  the  Peers  and 
Commons.  But  to  the  oath  was  added  a  form  of 
words,  that  to  maintain  the  doctrine  was  impious, 
heretical,  and  damnable ;  a  declaration  to  which  many 
a  conscientious  Roman  Catholic,  who  would  otherwise 
have  willingly  subscribed,  demurred.  The  Jesuits  in 
particular  condemned  it.  Pope  Paul  V.  issued  two 
briefs  against  it,  and  declared  that  no  Romanist  could 
take  the  oath  without  dishonour  to  God ;  and  Black- 
well,  the  arch-priest  of  the  seculars  in  England,  drew 
down  upon  himself  the  vengeance  of  Rome,  and  his 
own  deprivation,  by  not  only  taking  the  oath  him- 
self, but  persuading  his  brethren  that  Catholics 
ought  to  take  it,  and  thus  exonerate  their  body 
from  treason. 

Severe  measures  were  accordingly  adopted  against 
the  Romanists  ;  twenty-eight  priests  and  seven  laymen 
were  executed,  and  128  were  banished,  and  others  sub- 
jected to  heavy  fines.  One  good,  however,  came  out 
of  this  great  evil.  It  was  discovered  that  the  infliction 
of  death  for  religious  error,  instead  of  only  for  a  vicious 
life,  is  sure  to  propagate  the  errors  which  it  condemns, 
so  the  execution  of  heretics  was  for  the  future  con- 
demned and  abandoned. 

In  1618  was  put  forth  "the  Book  of  Sports."  A 
difference  of  opinion  had  long  existed  as  to  the  proper 
observance  of  the  Lord's  Day.  Some  amongst  the 
Puritans  held  it  to  be  "  as  great  a  sin  to  do  any  single 
work  on  the  Lord's  Day,  as  to  kill  a  man,  or  commit 
adultery  ;"  "  to  ring  more  bells  than  one  on  the  Lord's 


37^       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


Day,  was  as  great  a  sin  as  to  commit  a  murder  ^"  In 
his  progress  through  Lancashire,  the  king  had  noticed 
that  on  Sunday  the  poor  people  were  deprived  of  all 
innocent  games  and  amusements ;  but  in  issuing  the 
"  Book  of  Sports  "  he  went  to  the  other  extreme,  and 
so  distressed  the  feelings  of  the  Puritans ;  this  was 
one  of  the  ways  in  which  James  needlessly  paved  the 
way  to  the  future  troubles  of  his  successor.  The  book 
declared  that  after  service  on  Sunday  the  people  might 
enjoy  such  pastimes  as  dancing.  May-games,  Whitsun- 
ales,  Morris-dances,  and  the  like.  The  declaration 
was  ordered  to  be  read  in  all  the  churches ;  this,  how- 
ever, the  Archbishop  (Abbot)  forbade  in  his  own 
church  at  Croydon. 

James,  who  prided  himself  on  his  theological  attain- 
ments, and  was  ready  to  take  part  in  every  dispute 
that  occurred,  could  not  refrain  from  sending  deputies 
to  the  Synod  of  Dort  in  1618,  which  was  summoned 
by  the  Prince  of  Orange  with  a  view  to  settling  the  dis- 
putes between  the  Arminians  and  the  Calvinists.  The 
object  of  the  king,  whose  religion  was  a  strange  med- 
ley, was  to  bring  about  a  union  between  the  foreign 
Protestants  and  the  English  Church  ;  and  as  the  synod 
was  composed  mainly  of  Calvinistic  divines,  the  Eng- 
lish Church  was  in  danger  of  being  committed  to  ex- 
treme Calvinism.  The  controversy  between  the  Ar- 
minians and  Calvinists  consisted  of  five  points,  (hence 
it  was  called  the  "  Quinquarticular  Controversy ;") 
these  points  were,- — Original  sin  ;  Irrespective  Elec- 
tion and  Reprobation ;  Particular  Redemption  ;  Irre- 
sistible Grace  ;  and  Final  Perseverance.  All  these 
points  were  held  by  the  Calvinists,  and,  as  would  be 
expected  from  the  composition  of  the  synod,  were  all 

'  Heylin's  Aerius  Redivh'us. 


THE  GROWTH  OF  PURITANISM. 


379 


determined  in  their  favour.  The  synod,  however,  did 
not  please  the  king.  "  The  king,"  says  Neal  ^  "  had 
assisted  in  maintaining  these  doctrines  in  Holland,  but 
will  not  have  them  propagated  in  England.  From 
this  time  all  Calvinists  were  in  a  manner  excluded 
from  court  preferments."  But  henceforward  the  name 
Arminian  was  commonly  applied  by  the'  Puritans  to 
the  Church  party  in  England,  and  identified  with 
Romanism. 

King  James  I.  died  on  March  17,  1625.  During 
his  reign,  the  breach  between  the  Puritans  and  the 
Church  was  visibly  and  materially  widened.  James, 
though  always  boasting  of  his  skill  in  kingcraft,  was 
by  his  arbitrary  and  overbearing,  though  at  the  same 
time  weak  and  vacillating  character,  pursuing  a  course 
opposed  to  the  wishes  of  the  people,  and  which  was 
sure  to  bring  forth  a  fruitful  crop  of  evils  in  his  suc- 
cessor's days.  During  the  primacy  of  Bancroft,  Cla- 
rendon assures  us  that  the  Church  had  nearly  been 
rescued  out  of  the  hands  of  the  Puritans  ;  if  he  had 
lived,  he  would  have  extinguished  all  the  fire  that  had 
been  kindled  in  England  from  Geneva;  "or  if  he 
had  been  succeeded  by  Bishop  Andrewes  or  Bishop 
Overall,  or  any  man  who  understood  and  loved  the 
Church,  that  infection  would  easily  have  been  kept 
out,  which  could  not  afterwards  be  so  easily  ex- 
pelled 

There  was  a  general  expectation  that  Bancroft 
would  have  been  succeeded  by  Andrewes,  certainly 
the  most  eminent  of  the  bishops.  Unfortunately  Ab- 
bot had  written  a  book  which  flattered  James'  vanity. 
He  described  James  as  being  "zealous  as  David, 
learned  as  Solomon,  religious  as  Josias,  careful  of 

*  Puritans,  ii.  119.  «  Clarendon,  i.  36. 


380       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

spreading  the  truth  as  Constantine,  just  as  Moses, 
undefiled  as  Jehoshaphat  or  Hezekiah,  clement  as 
Theodosius^"  What  other  claim  Abbot  could  have 
had  to  the  primacy  it  is  difficult  to  imagine.  He 
was  not  a  man  of  deep  learning ;  when  Master  of 
University  College,  Oxford,  he  and  his  brother,  the 
Master  of  Balliol,  had  been  the  great  upholders  of 
Puritanism  in  the  University.  He  was  three  times 
Vice-Chancellor,  in  which  capacity  he  had  exhibited 
his  strong  Puritanical  antipathy  against  the  Arme- 
nian party,  who  were  stigmatised  as  Romanists  ;  he 
ordered  several  pictures  which  he  considered  super- 
stitious to  be  burnt  in  the  market  -  place,  and  he 
offered  an  incessant  opposition  to  Laud,  who  was  at 
that  time  Fellow  of  St.  John's.  In  1599,  Abbot  be- 
came Dean  of  Winchester;  in  1609,  Bishop  of  Lich- 
field and  Coventry;  in  1610,  of  London;  and  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  in  161 1.  In  this  capacity  he 
was  never  able  to  lay  aside  the  narrow  Puritanism 
in  which  he  had  been  brought  up ;  and  the  lax  rule 
of  his  primacy,  which  lasted  till  1633,  united  to  his 
austere  and  repulsive  temper,  and  the  most  latitu- 
dinarian  principles,  conduced  more  than  anything  else 
to  produce  that  rebellion  which  brought  his  successor 
to  the  scaffold.  Before  his  accession  to  the  primacy, 
the  hopes  of  the  Puritans  had  been  damped  by  the 
death  of  the  heir  apparent,  Henry,  Prince  of  Wales, 
"  the  darling  of  the  Puritans,"  as  he  was  called.  Their 
grief  at  his  loss  knew  no  bounds,  and  their  hatred  to 
Prince  Charles  increased ;  but  by  Abbot's  elevation 
everything  favoured  them.  By  his  laxity  of  disci- 
pline, and  his  appointment  of  Puritans  to  important 
stations  in  the  Church,  no  doubt  he  acted  conscien- 
Wrangham's  Life  of  Abbot. 


THE  GROWTH  OF  PURITANISM.  38 1 

tiously,  and  thought  to  make  concessions  to  tender 
consciences  ;  but  no  less  surely,  during  his  long 
tenure  of  the  primacy,  was  he  preparing  the  evils 
of  which  Laud  became  the  victim,  and  of  which 
Laud  is  connected  in  the  minds  of  many  people  as 
the  originator. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


CHARLES  I.  THE  TRIUMPH  OF  PURITANISM. 

r^HARLES,  with  "much  in  his  character  very  suit- 
^  able  to  the  times  in  which  he  Hved  and  to  the 
spirit  of  the  people  he  was  to  rule  ;  a  stern  and  serious 
deportment,  a  disinclination  to  all  licentiousness,  and 
a  sense  of  religion  which  seemed  more  real  than  his 
father  ^ ;"  a  man  of  whom  "  it  would  be  absurd  to  deny 
that  he  was  a  scholar  and  a  gentleman,  a  man  of  ex- 
quisite taste  in  the  fine  arts,  of  strict  morals  in  private 
life  succeeded  his  father  at  the  age  of  twenty-five 
years,  a.d.  1625,  but  he  succeeded  to  a  throne  full  of 
embarrassments.  The  plague  was  devastating  the 
country,  an  expensive  war  threatened,  and  a  large 
debt  had  been  incurred.  Charles  had  contracted  an 
unpopular  engagement  with  a  Spanish  Princess ;  in 
1623  he  and  the  Duke  of  Buckingham  went  to  Spain 
to  bring  her  to  England ;  difficulties  ensued,  and  to 
the  joy  of  England  Charles  returned  without  his 
Spanish  bride.  Parliament  now  wished  him  to  marry 
a  Protestant ;  instead  of  this,  he  made  the  great  mis- 
take of  his  life  in  marrying  Henrietta  Maria,  daughter 
of  Henry  IV.,  King  of  France.  She  was  a  devoted 
member  of  the  Roman  Church,  and  Richelieu  took 
care  that  the  marriage  agreement  should  be  drawn  up 
in  terms  favourable  to  Rome;  accordingly  she  was  to 
have  the  care  of  their  children  till  they  were  twelve 
years  old  ^  She  brought  with  her  to  England  a  Roman 

»  Hallam,  Const.  Hist.,  ch.  vii.  Macaulay,  Essays. 

There  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  stipulation  was  not  carried  out ; 
but  that  the  articles  should  have  been  framed,  shews  the  arrogant  con- 
tempt of  James  and  Charles  for  English  opinion.  (Hal.  Const.  Hist,  vii.) 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  PURITANISM. 


bishop,  and  a  large  number  of  Roman  priests,  for 
whom  a  chapel  was  fitted  up  in  St.  James'  Palace  ;  and 
so  unpopular  was  the  marriage  in  England,  that  it  was 
pronounced  as  a  judgment  from  Heaven,  even  greater 
than  the  plague  that  was  devastating  the  country. 

Charles  himself  was  devoutly  attached  to  the  Eng- 
lish Church,  without  any  bias  towards  Rome,  although 
it  is  not  too  much  to  say  he  liked  a  Romanist  better 
than  a  Puritan.  The  condition  of  the  Church  was  out- 
wardly flourishing,  but  beneath  was  smouldering  the 
volcano  which  was  soon  to  burst  with  such  terrible 
violence.  The  Puritans,  under  the  primacy  of  Abbot, 
had  gained  courage  and  influence  in  the  Church,  and 
they  determined  to  repress  the  obnoxious  ceremonies 
which  were  prescribed  in  the  Church's  formularies. 
At  this  time  they  formed  a  majority  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  Charles  had  been  brought  up  in  a  school 
which  had  for  some  time  been  gradually  but  surely 
getting  out  of  date.  Henry  and  Elizabeth  had  treated 
the  Commons  as  if  they  were  schoolboys ;  and  from 
his  father  Charles  had  learnt  that  all  legitimate  power 
was  confined  to  the  Crown,  opposition  to  which  was 
rebellion.  But  the  secular  arm  had  now  lost  its  force. 
The  Puritans  in  the  House  of  Commons  felt  their 
power,  and  with  admirable  dexterity  they  seized  the 
right  which  the  constitution  afforded  them  of  opposing 
the  king  without  infringing  the  law.  To  them  be- 
longed the  duty  of  granting  or  withholding  the  sup- 
plies ;  this  right,  which  the  Tudors  would  have  thought 
little  short  of  high  treason,  they  determined  to  exer- 
cise ;  and,  whilst  taking  from  the  Crown  the  undue 
prerogative  with  which  the  Tudors  and  Stuarts  had 
invested  it,  they  could  effect  what  was  still  nearer  to 
their  heart,  the  overthrow  of  a  religion  which  had  not 


384       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

gone  far  enough  in  the  way  of  reform ;  which,  as  far 
as  they  could  see,  had  only  substituted  a  temporal  (and 
that  might  be  a  woman)  for  a  spiritual  head,  which 
exacted  a  uniformity  in  its  papistical  doctrines,  and 
which  refused  to  others  the  freedom  which  it  claimed 
for  itself  when  it  shook  off  the  despotism  of  Rome. 

Such  was  the  feeling  of  the  House  of  Commons  at 
the  beginning  of  the  reign.  Charles,  like  his  pre- 
decessor, was  no  doubt  imperious,  perhaps  obstinate 
and  narrow-minded  ;  at  any  rate,  he  misunderstood  the 
signs  of  the  times  and  the  temper  of  his  people.  The 
last  years  of  Elizabeth,  when  the  House  of  Commons 
had  gained  a  great  victory  over  the  throne  on  the 
question  of  monopolies,  shewed  unmistakably  that 
a  crisis  was  at  hand.  Elizabeth,  as  we  have  seen 
understood  the  crisis,  and  yielded  graciously.  "  If  her 
successors  had  inherited  her  wisdom  with  her  crown, 
Charles  I.  might  have  died  of  old  age,  and  James  II. 
would  never  have  seen  St.  Germain's  ^" 

In  a  reign  where  the  interests  of  Church  and  State 
were  of  necessity  so  intimately  blended,  and  where 
Church  and  throne  fell  together,  it  is  difficult  to  draw 
a  decided  line,  and  to  distinguish  clearly  what  belongs 
to  the  history  of  the  State  and  what  to  that  of  the 
Church.  The  history  of  the  struggle  between  Charles 
and  Parliament  is  the  history  of  a  religious  strug- 
gle, ending  in  the  triumph  of  Puritanism ;  but  in  that 
struggle  we  find  Parliament  usurping  the  duties  of  the 
Church,  and  pronouncing  ecclesiastical  censures  ;  whilst 
the  Church  invaded  the  duties  of  Parliament  by  in- 
sisting on  the  divine  right  of  kings,  and  of  its  own 
right  to  impose  taxes  without,  and  even  in  opposition 
to,  the  wish  of  Parliament. 

^  Macaulay's  Essays. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  PURITANISM, 


An  instance  of  this  kind  of  interference  occurred  at 
the  very  beginning  of  the  reign.  The  first  Parliament 
assembled  June  18,  1625.  The  Commons  set  forth 
a  list  of  their  grievances,  and  presented  a  petition  for 
the  execution  of  the  penal  laws  against  Papists.  The 
king  promised  redress,  but  he  promised  more  than, 
with  the  best  intentions,  he  was  able  to  perform ;  for 
by  his  marriage  articles  he  had  already  pledged  him- 
self to  grant  toleration  to  the  Romanists,  and  at  that 
very  time  his  palace  was  filled  with  Roman  Catholics, 
who  had  come  from  France  to  celebrate  the  wedding 
festivities. 

The  next  step  of  Parliament  was  to  usurp  the  duties 
of  Convocation.  Montagu,  one  of  the  king's  chaplains, 
of  whom  Fuller  says  that  he  was  much  skilled  in  the 
Fathers,  in  ecclesiastical  antiquity,  and  in  the  Latin 
and  Greek  tongues,  had  in  the  reign  of  the  late  king, 
in  answer  to  a  pamphlet  published  by  some  Jesuits, 
written  another  pamphlet,  in  which  he  spoke  dis- 
respectfully of  the  Synod  of  Dort  and  the  doctrines 
of  the  Puritans*.  The  pamphlet  gave  great  offence  to 
the  Puritans,  as  inculcating  Arminianism  and  Popery, 
and  it  was  condemned  by  Archbishop  Abbot.  On  the 
death  of  James,  Montagu  appealed  against  this  injus- 
tice, and  published  in  vindication  of  himself  another 
pamphlet,  which  he  dedicated  to  King  Charles,  styled 
"  Appello  Caesarem."  He  was  not,  he  said,  Arminian, 
Calvinist,  or  Lutheran,  names  of  division,  but  Chris- 
tian ;  "  For  Arminianism,  I  must  and  doe  protest 
before  God  and  His  angels  that  the  time  is  yet  to 
come  that  I  ever  read  word  in  Arminius."  Montagu, 
however,  was  condemned  by  a  committee  of  the  House 

'  The  pamphlet  of  the  Jesuits  was  styled  "A  Gag  for  the  New  Gos- 
pel ;"  that  of  Montagu's  answer,  "  A  new  Gag  for  an  old  goose." 

C  C 


386       THE  CHURCH   OF  THE   REFORMATION  ERA. 


of  Commons  ;  Laud,  at  that  time  Bishop  of  St.  David's, 
together  with  the  Bishops  of  Oxford  and  Rochester, 
complained  that  the  House  of  Commons  had  usurped 
the  duties  of  Convocation.  The  king  also  complained 
of  their  calling  one  of  his  chaplains  to  the  bar  of  the 
House.  Parliament  then  voted  insufficient  supplies. 
The  king  was  astonished  :  he  dissolved  Parliament, 
and  raised  money  under  his  Privy  Seal. 

The  next  Parliament  met  on  February  6,  1626, 
many  of  the  obnoxious  members  having  been  in  the 
meantime  appointed  sheriffs,  in  order  to  unfit  tfiem  for 
re-election.  But  there  was  no  change  in  the  spirit  of 
Parliament :  Montagu  was  again  condemned,  and  again 
the  king  dissolved  Parliament.  Unfortunately  at  this 
time  the  Church  was  deprived  of  the  services  of  the 
most  learned  of  its  bishops,  for  Bishop  Andrewes  died 
in  October,  1626. 

The  king  in  his  emergency,  under  the  necessity  of 
obtaining  money,  had  sent  a  circular  letter  to  the 
bishops,  instructing  them  to  preach  the  doctrine  of 
passive  obedience,  and  to  use  their  influence  in  induc- 
ing their  people  to  submit  to  forced  loans.  Two  ser- 
mons preached  before  the  king  by  Sibthorpe  and 
Mainwaring,  men  of  strong  Erastian  principles,  espe- 
cially attracted  attention,  as  greatly  exaggerating  the 
royal  authority.  Mainwaring  maintained  that  "  Par- 
liaments were  not  ordained  to  contribute  any  right  to 
the  king,  but  for  the  more  equal  imposing  and  more 
easy  exacting  of  that  which  unto  kings  doth  appertain 
by  natural  and  original  law  and  justice,  as  their  proper 
inheritance  annexed  to  their  political  crown  from  their 
birth."  Abbot  condemned  the  sermon,  and  his  short 
suspension  (whether  from  this  cause  is  unknown)  fol- 
lowed soon  afterwards.   Fuller  gives  a  different  reason 


THE  TRIUMTH  OF  TURITANISM. 


for  his  suspension.  Seven  years  previously,  whilst 
shooting  at  a  buck  in  Bramshill  Park,  he  had  missed 
the  buck  and  killed  the  keeper.  The  question  was  at 
the  time  much  discussed  at  home  and  abroad,  whether 
or  not  the  archbishop,  having  blood  on  his  hands,  was 
incapacitated  for  his  office ;  and  three  newly-elected 
bishops,  of  whom  Laud  was  one,  refused  to  be  conse- 
crated by  him,  from  a  fear  that  they  might  be  "attainted 
with  the  contagion  of  his  scandal  and  uncanonical  con- 
dition." A  commission  was  appointed  to  examine  the 
case,  and  without  exculpating  Abbot,  recommended 
the  king  to  forgive  him  ;  his  offence  was  therefore  for 
the  time  forgiven,  but  now  it  was  felt  that  the  stain  of 
blood  attached  to  him,  and  unfitted  him  for  his  office. 

Parliament,  however,  would  not  allow  Mainwaring's 
sermon  to  escape  them.  The  Commons  resolved  that 
he  had  abused  his  holy  functions,  and  had  offended 
against  the  State ;  and  the  Lords  condemned  him  to 
imprisonment,  fined  him  ^1000,  and  suspended  him  for 
three  years.  How  little  weight  the  king  attached  to 
the  opinion  of  Parliament  may  be  judged  from  the  fact, 
that  in  a  few  months  he  presented  him  to  the  Deanery 
of  Worcester,  and  afterwards  to  the  Bishopric  of  St. 
David's ;  whilst  Montagu  became  successively  Bishop 
of  Chichester  and  Norwich,  and  in  1628  Laud,  of 
whose  Arminian  doctrines  the  House  of  Commons  had 
complained,  was  promoted  to  the  see  of  London. 

On  March  17,  1628,  Charles,  wanting  money,  was 
obliged  to  summon  another  Parliament,  and  finding 
that  an  inflexible  opposition  was  useless,  he  reluct- 
antly ratified  the  famous  "  Petition  of  right,"  the 
second  great  charter  of  English  liberty.  He  bound 
himself  to  levy  no  taxes  without  Parliament,  never  to 
imprison  any  one  except  in  due  course  of  law,  not  to 

c  c  2 


388       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


billet  soldiers  on  private  houses,  nor  to  subject  the 
people  to  the  jurisdiction  of  courts  martial ;  a  com- 
promise was  thus  effected,  and  Parliament  voted  five 
subsidies,  nearly  ^400,000.  But  even  now  the  Com- 
mons were  not  satisfied  with  the  king.  Before  the 
supply  bill  had  passed  the  House  of  Lords,  they  drew 
up  a  Remonstrance  setting  forth  the  grievances  of  the 
nation,  grievances  which  could  not  be  remedied  till 
Calvinism  was  made  the  standard  of  orthodoxy,  and 
no  tolerance  shewn  for  Arminianism,  or  what  they 
deemed  equivalent,  Romanism.  But  as  soon  as  the 
money  bill  passed,  the  king,  without  waiting  to  receive 
the  Remonstrance,  dissolved  Parliament ;  and  from 
1629  to  1640  there  was  no  Parliament  at  all. 

One  of  the  first  acts  of  Laud  as  Bishop  of  London 
was  a  conciliatory  measure,  to  prefix  the  royal  decla- 
ration, as  it  now  stands,  to  the  Thirty-nine  Articles, 
prohibiting  any  but  the  plain  and  literal  sense  being 
attached  to  them ;  this  he  did,  although  without  sub- 
mitting it  to  Convocation,  under  the  hope  of  restoring 
peace  to  the  Church,  and  composing  the  differences 
between  the  Puritans  and  Arminians.  But  even  this 
did  not  satisfy  the  Puritans  ;  they  declared,  and  Arch- 
bishop Abbot  joined  them,  that  it  was  done  out  of 
favour  to  the  Arminians,  "  the  spawn  of  Papists,"  and 
to  prevent  godly  preachers  from  preaching  the  doc- 
trine of  election  and  reprobation.  In  the  session  of 
1629,  a  committee,  in  which  the  name  of  Oliver  Crom- 
well for  the  first  time  appears,  was  appointed  to  con- 
sider the  Declaration,  and  the  following  answer,  which 
was  called  their  Vow,  was  drawn  up  :  "We,  the  Com- 
mons in  Parliament  assembled,  do  claim,  protest  and 
avow  for  truth,  the  sense  of  the  Articles  of  Religion 
which  was  established  by  Parliament  in  the  thirteenth 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  PURITANISM. 


year  of  our  late  Queen  Elizabeth,  which,  by  the  public 
act  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  by  the  general  and 
current  exposition  of  the  writers  of  our  Church,  hath 
been  delivered  unto  us  :  and  we  reject  the  sense  of  the 
Jesuits  and  Arminians,  and  all  others  wherein  they 
differ  from  us."  A  scene  of  orreat  confusion  in  the. 
House  of  Commons  followed.  The  king  forbade  the 
Speaker  to  put  the  question,  and  ordered  an  adjourn- 
ment :  the  Speaker  was  forcibly  held  down  in  his 
chair ;  a  protest  was  made  against  the  illegal  conduct 
of  the  king,  the  first  article  of  which  was,  "  Whosoever 
shall  by  favour  or  countenance  seem  to  extend  Popery 
or  Arminianism,  shall  be  reported  a  capital  enemy  of 
the  kingdom." 

In  1633  Laud  was  appointed  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury. A  new  era  in  the  history  of  Church  and  State 
in  England  commenced.  For  the  first  time  in  its  his- 
tory, the  country  was  left  without  a  Parliament  for 
eleven  years  ;  the  Constitution  was  an  absolute  mo- 
narchy, Charles  being  his  own  Prime  Minister.  Buck- 
ingham had  been  stabbed  by  a  man  named  Felton,  as 
he  was  about  to  join  the  fleet  that  was  sailing  for  the 
war  against  France.  Sir  Charles  Wentworth,  who 
was  afterwards  created  Lord  Strafford,  and  Arch- 
bishop Laud  were,  in  consequence,  the  king's  chief  ad- 
visers. The  office  was  thrust  on  Laud,  and  he  could 
not  refuse  it.  It  was,  as  we  learn  from  his  own  word, 
not  only  opposed  to  his  natural  inclination,  but  was 
also  at  variance  with  his  episcopal  duties ;  it  drew 
down  on  him  the  greatest  share  of  obloquy  of  all  the 
king's  ministers  :  he  had  long  suffered  under  the  un- 
merited calumny  of  being  a  papist ;  henceforward  he 
had  to  bear  also  the  unpopularity  of  the  king :  whilst 
on  him  fell,  not  without  some  reason,  the  blame  of 


390       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


the  two  infamous  tribunals  of  the  High  Commission 
and  the  Star  Chamber,  the  power  of  which  had  greatly 
increased  under  Charles. 

It  was  not  long  before  the  troubles  of  the  arch- 
bishop commenced.  The  ordinary  amusements  in 
country  parishes  on  Sunday  afternoons  were  called, 
Church-ales,  at  which  money  was  collected  for  the 
repairs  of  the  churches  ;  Clerk-ales,  for  the  benefit  of 
the  Parish-clerk ;  and  Bid-ales,  for  the  poor.  King 
James  had,  as  before  stated,  published  a  Book  of 
Sports,  specifying  such  amusements  as  might  be  per- 
mitted on  Sundays.  In  1633,  Chief  Justice  Richard- 
son, at  the  request  of  the  Somersetshire  magistrates, 
forbade  the  ales  and  wakes,  and  directed  that  the  clergy 
should  read  his  order  in  their  churches ;  an  unwar- 
rantable interference  in  ecclesiastical  matters,  for  which 
he  was  severely  rebuked  before  the  Privy  Council  by 
the  archbishop.  It  was  by  the  advice  of  Laud  deter- 
mined that  the  Book  of  Sports  should  be  re-published. 
This  step,  which  was  unpopular  enough  in  itself,  was 
rendered  more  so  by  an  order  to  the  clergy  to  read  it 
in  their  churches ;  some  obeyed,  some  altogether  re- 
fused ;  whilst  others  read  it  with  the  fourth  command- 
ment, adding,  "  This  is  the  law  of  God,  that  the  law 
of  man." 

This  re-publication  called  forth  from  Prynne,  a  con- 
ceited and  hot-headed  young  barrister,  a  libellous  book 
called  "  Histriomastix,"  reflecting  on  these  Sunday 
amusements,  and  on  the  court,  but  more  especially 
on  the  queen,  who  was  particularly  fond  of  them. 
He  was,  in  consequence,  tried  in  the  Star  Chamber ; 
his  book  was  condemned  to  be  burnt  by  the  common 
hangman,  and  himself  to  stand  twice  in  the  pillory, 
to  lose  both  his  ears,  to  be  fined  five  thousand  pounds, 


THE  TRIUMPH 


OF 


PURITANISM. 


and  to  be  imprisoned  for  life ;  two  others,  Bastwick, 
a  physician,  and  Burton,  a  clergyman,  were  condemned 
to  a  similar  punishment :  Prynne,  offending  again,  the 
stumps  of  his  ears  were  cut  off,  and  he  was  branded  in 
both  cheeks.  Laud  declared  that  he  had  no  more 
to  do  with  these  cruel  punishments  than  every  other 
member  of  the  Star  Chamber  ;  nevertheless,  the 
whole  odium  rested  upon  him.  Prynne,  who  was 
a  great  favourite  with  the  people,  was  regarded  as 
a  martyr,  and  henceforward  became  the  avowed  enemy 
of  Laud  to  the  end  of  his  life,  and  at  his  trial  was  the 
barrister  employed  to  prepare  the  case  against  him, 
Prynne  lived  long  enough  to  confess  the  justice  of  his 
punishment ;  and  that  if  the  king  had  cut  off  his  head 
also,  when  he  cropped  his  ears,  he  would  have  done 
what  was  just,  and  "  have  done  good,  and  the  nation 
good  service." 

Nothing  offended  the  Puritans,  and  it  must  be  added 
also  many  professed  Conformists,  more  than  Laud's 
endeavours  to  introduce  a  decent  ceremonial  into  the 
services  of  the  Church.  The  practice  which  had  been 
brought  into  vogue,  of  moving  the  holy  table  into 
the  body  of  the  church  at  the  time  of  the  celebration 
of  Holy  Communion,  had  led  to  great  irreverence  and 
desecration.  The  altar  was  made  the  receptacle  of  the 
hats  and  overcoats  of  the  congregation,  and  sometimes 
a  table  where  the  churchwardens  cast  up  their  accounts. 
Laud,  therefore,  ordered  that  the  altars  should  at  all 
times  stand  at  the  east  end  of  the  church,  raised  above 
the  level  of  the  floor,  and  fenced  in  by  a  rail,  so  that 
they  might  be  screened  from  approach,  except  of  the 
communicants,  at  the  Holy  Eucharist.  This  decent 
arrangement  brought  down  upon  him  the  opposition 
even  of  the  bishops,  more  especially  of  Williams,  who 


392       THE  CHURCH   OF  THE   REFORMATION  ERA. 


at  that  time  was  Bishop  of  Lincoln  and  Dean  of  West- 
minster, as  well  as  Lord  Chancellor  ;  and  he  was  ac- 
cused of  bringing  back  the  Host,  and  the  discarded 
superstitions  of  Rome. 

The  king  had  long  entertained  a  desire  of  bringing 
the  Scottish  Kirk  into  conformity  with  the  English 
Church  ;  and,  with  that  view,  had  in  1833,  in  company 
with  Laud,  made  a  visit  to  Scotland.  The  Scotch 
people  had  always  been  turbulent  and  ungovernable  : 
"  They  had  butchered  their  first  James  in  his  bed- 
chamber ;  they  had  repeatedly  arrayed  themselves 
in  arms  against  James  the  Second ;  they  had  slain 
James  the  Third  on  the  field  of  battle  ;  their  diso- 
bedience had  broken  the  heart  of  James  the  Fifth  ; 
they  had  deposed  and  imprisoned  Mary ;  they  had 
led  her  son  captive,  and  their  temper  was  still  as  in- 
tolerable as  everV  Besides  this,  there  was  always 
a  bitter  antipathy  to  England.  What  England  did, 
that  Scotland  was  sure  to  disapprove  of.  The  refor- 
mation in  Scotland  did  not  take  place  till  twenty-five 
years  after  it  was  begun  in  England  ;  and  when  it  did 
take  place,  it  was  of  a  much  more  thorough  and  sweep- 
ing kind.  The  reformed  Kirk  of  Scotland,  under  the 
guidance  of  John  Knox,  was  shaped  on  the  principle 
in  vogue  in  Geneva,  on  the  model  of  the  most  rigid 
Calvinism  ;  and  though  James  the  First  of  England 
had  established  a  Scotch  episcopacy,  the  Church  go- 
vernment was  really  Presbyterian.  The  most  bitter 
hatred  was  felt  towards  everything  connected  with  the 
Church  of  Rome,  and  the  Church  of  England  was 
thought  little  better  than  that  of  Rome.  Charles 
wished  to  introduce  the  English  liturgy,  but  when 
the  Scotch  bishops  urged  that  the  national  feeling 

'  Macaulay,  i.  93. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  PURITANISM. 


393 


would  revolt  against  such  interference,  he  ordered  them 
when  he  left  Scotland  to  prepare  a  Scotch  liturgy  and 
canons.  The  liturgy,  when  it  arrived  in  England,  was 
referred  to  three  bishops,  Laud,  Juxon,  and  Wren  ; 
and,  after  having  undergone  certain  changes,  and  being 
ratified  by  the  king,  it  was  sent  back  to  Scotland  in 
1637,  with  an  order  that  it  should  be  used  on  an  ap- 
pointed day  in  all  the  churches  throughout  the  land. 

The  opposition  which  the  king's  proclamation  en- 
countered at  Edinburgh  was  overwhelming.  The 
Sunday  on  which  its  use  was  first  attempted  is  still 
known  as  "Stony  Sabbath,"  or  "Casting  of  the  Stools." 
The  Dean,  when  he  began  the  service  in  the  cathe- 
dral, was  assailed  with  a  volley  of  stones,  whilst 
a  woman  aimed  a  three-legged  stool  at  his  head, 
which  fortunately  missed  its  mark  :  the  bishop,  when 
he  mounted  the  pulpit,  received  no  better  treatment, 
and  in  attempting  to  make  his  escape,  nearly  lost  his 
life  ;  and  the  clergy  in  the  other  churches  met  with 
a  similar  outrage.  The  futility  of  enforcing  the  liturgy 
on  an  unwilling  people  was  too  apparent.  All  classes 
of  the  laity  were  opposed  to  it ;  women  of  the  highest 
rank  joined  the  dissentients ;  it  was  soon  found  that 
the  majority  of  the  clergy  were  opposed,  not  only  to 
episcopal  government,  but  to  any  prescribed  form  of 
worship ;  the  bishops  were  regarded  as  the  enemies 
of  the  country,  and  the  abettors  of  superstition,  and 
a  bishop  could  not  walk  with  safety  in  the  streets 
of  Edinburgh.  A  revolutionary  committee  was  formed, 
designated  "the  Tables;"  and  in  March,  1638,  the 
people  bound  themselves  by  a  Solemn  League  and 
Covenant  to  resist  all  innovations,  not  to  be  intimidated 
by  any  threats,  but  to  abolish  episcopacy,  not  only  in 
Scotland,  but  in  England  and  Ireland  also,  and  to 


394       THE   CHURCH  OF  THE   REFORMATION  ERA. 


restore  the  liberty  and  purity  of  the  Gospel  :  Christ, 
they  said,  was  himself  a  Covenanter,  and  whoever 
refused  to  join  them  was  considered  an  Atheist. 

The  king,  seeing  the  danger  of  the  crisis,  sent  the 
Marquis  of  Hamilton  to  Edinburgh,  and  made  con- 
siderable concessions  ;  he  sanctioned  the  Covenant,  and 
withdrew  the  liturgy  and  canons  :  the  clergy  and  laity 
alike  pronounced  with  one  voice  they  would  as  soon 
renounce  their  Baptism  as  the  Covenant:  the  General 
Assembly  met,  and  claimed  its  right  to  sit,  notwith- 
standing the  royal  prohibition  ;  it  abolished  episco- 
pacy, renounced  Arminianism,  and  adopted  Calvin- 
ism. It  declared  that  its  acts,  sentences,  and  censures 
should  be  obeyed  throughout  the  whole  kingdom ;  it 
pronounced  sentence  of  deposition  against  all  the 
Scotch  bishops,  eight  of  whom  were  excommunicated  : 
nor  was  this  all ;  an  address  was  drawn  up  to  the  people 
of  England,  requesting  them  to  join  the  Covenanters, 
and  an  agent  was  sent  to  London  to  draw  over  ad- 
herents to  their  party.  Scotland  was  in  open  rebel- 
lion ;  the  Scots  invaded  England  ;  the  king  with  an 
army  of  twenty  thousand  marched  to  the  frontier,  but 
consented  to  an  insecure  truce ;  the  Scots  offered  no 
submission  ;  the  king  had  no  other  resource  but  to 
summon  Parliament ;  the  short  Parliament,  as  it  was 
called,  met  on  April  13,  1640,  and  the  king  selected 
to  preach  the  sermon,  Bishop  Wren,  next  to  Laud,  the 
most  unpopular  of  all  the  bishops. 

The  new  House  of  Commons  observed  great  mo- 
deration, and  was  more  respectful  to  the  throne  than 
any  which  had  sat  since  the  time  of  Elizabeth^.  All 
the  anger  of  the  Commons  was  turned  against  Laud ; 
they  complained  of  popish  ceremonies,  such  as  altars, 

K  Macaulay,  i.  95. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  PURITANISM. 


395 


bowing  to  the  east,  crosses,  crucifixes,  and  pictures ; 
as  well  as  the  acts  of  the  High  Commission  Court,  and 
of  the  punishment  of  clergy  for  refusing  to  read  the 
Book  of  Sports  in  their  churches  ;  they  began  to 
repeat  the  grievances  which  the  nation  had  suffered 
for  the  last  eleven  years  ;  thereupon  the  king  dissolved 
Parliament.  When  Parliament  was  dissolved,  it  was 
the  custom  to  dissolve  Convocation  also ;  but  now  it 
was  proposed  that  Convocation  should  continue  its 
sittings,  and  the  question  arose  whether  Convocation 
was  not  independent  of  Parliament.  The  matter  was 
referred  to  the  law  officers  of  the  Crown,  who  decided 
that  "  Convocation  being  called  by  the  king's  writ 
under  the  Great  Seal,  does  continue  till  it  is  dis- 
solved." Convocation  therefore  continued  till  the  29th 
of  May.  Several  canons  were  enacted  ;  but  one  canon 
directed  against  the  Scotch  Covenant,  which  imposed 
upon  the  clergy  a  new  oath,  known  as  the  "  et  caetera  " 
oath,  was  most  obnoxious  to  the  people.  The  form 
of  the  oath  to  be  taken  was,  "  I  swear  that  I  approve 
the  doctrine,  discipline,  and  government,  established 
in  the  Church  of  England,  as  containing  all  things  ne- 
cessary to  salvation,  and  that  I  will  not  endeavour  by 
myself  or  any  other,  directly  or  indirectly,  to  bring  in 
any  popish  doctrine  contrary  to  that  which  is  so  esta- 
blished ;  nor  will  I  ever  give  my  consent  to  alter  the 
government  of  the  Church  by  Archbishops,  Bishops, 
Deans,  and  Archdeacons,  et  ccstera,  as  it  stands  now 
established."  The  "  et  caetera "  plainly  refers  to  the 
chancellors  and  other  officers  of  the  Church,  and  was 
inserted  carelessly,  instead  of  "  et  caeteros,"  in  draft- 
ing the  form.  Yet  people  asked.  What  does  the 
"  et  caetera "  mean  ?  On  all  sides  the  oath  was  ob- 
jected to ;  and  many  of  the  clergy  refused  to  take  it. 


396       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


On  May  9  the  archbishop's  palace  at  Lambeth  was 
attacked ;  the  primate  was  obHged  to  retire  to  White- 
hall ;  Convocation  was  placed  under  the  protection  of 
an  armed  guard ;  the  High  Commission  Court  fled  for 
safety  from  Lambeth  to  St.  Paul's. 

Such  was  the  state  of  things  when  the  famous  Par- 
liament, known  as  the  Long  Parliament,  met ;  that 
Parliament  which,  beginning  with  the  execution  of 
Strafford,  did  not  end  its  work  till  the  Primate  and 
King,  and  some  of  the  first  nobility  in  the  land,  were 
committed  to  the  block,  and  Church  and  State  fell 
together. 

One  of  the  first  acts  of  the  new  Parliament  was  to 
release  the  prisoners  Prynne,  Burton,  and  Bastwick ; 
to  restore  Dr.  Williams,  who  had  been  suspended,  and 
condemned  to  pay  a  heavy  fine.  They  next  attacked 
the  clergy.  The  late  proceedings  in  Convocation  were 
condemned,  and  a  resolution  was  passed  that  the  clergy 
and  bishops  had  no  power  to  grant  subsidies,  or  to 
make  any  constitutions  or  canons,  or  any  acts  what- 
ever, whether  of  doctrine  or  discipline,  without  the 
consent  of  Parliament^. 

From  the  clergy  in  general  the  attack  passed  to 
Laud.  The  prejudice  against  Laud  was  not  a  little 
increased  by  the  action  of  the  Scottish  Commissioners, 
who  impeached  him  in  the  House  of  Lords  as  an  in- 
cendiary, charging  him  with  forcing  on  the  Scottish 
nation  alterations  in  religion,  and  a  liturgy  with  many 
corruptions  of  doctrine,  opposed  to  their  laws  and  cus- 
toms. On  Dec.  18  a  debate  took  place  in  the  House 
of  Commons  as  to  the  archbishop's  conduct.  To  him 
were  imputed  all  the  evils  under  which  the  nation 

By  the  statute  known  as  "  The  Submission  of  the  Clergy,"  there  was 
no  necessity  for  their  obtaining  the  sanction  of  Parliament. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  PURITANISM. 


397 


groaned ;  he  it  was  who  had  raised  to  their  dignities 
those  who  with  him  were  the  authors  of  their  calami- 
ties ;  who  had  gained  the  promotion  of  Strafford,  and 
who  had  advanced  the  popish  bishops,  Bishop  Main- 
v/aring,  Pearce  of  Bath  and  Wells,  the  Bishop  of 
Oxford,  and  Bishop  Wren ;  he  was  "  a  great  fire- 
brand;"  an  "angry  wasp  leaving  its  sting  in  every- 
thing ;"  and  he  was  false  to  the  Church.  The  debate 
ended  with  a  vote  of  the  house  that  he  was  a  traitor ; 
Laud  exclaimed  that  "not  one  man  in  the  House  of 
Commons  did  believe  it  in  his  heart ;"  this  only  made 
things  worse,  and  he  was  committed  to  the  custody 
of  the  Black  Rod ;  after  ten  weeks  he  was  on  March 
I,  1 64 1,  pursued  by  the  insults  and  revilings  of  the 
populace,  committed  to  the  tower,  whence  he  was  only 
to  emerge  twice,  once  for  his  trial,  the  other  time  for 
his  execution.  From  this  time  Convocation  gradually 
melted  away ;  henceforward  Parliament  assumed  its 
functions,  and  the  work  of  effecting  a  religious  Re- 
formation. 

On  March  15,  by  the  advice  of  Williams,  on  whom 
now  devolved  the  chief  management  of  ecclesiastical 
matters,  and  who  was  soon  raised  to  the  Archbishopric 
of  York,  a  "  committee  of  religion  "  was  named  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  consisting  of  twenty  lay-peers  and 
ten  bishops,  four  only  of  whom,  Williams,  Usher,  Hall, 
and  Merton,  consented  to  serve  ;  with  a  sub-committee 
of  clergy,  mostly  doctrinal  Puritans,"  for  the  reforma- 
tion of  abuses  both  in  doctrine  and  discipline.  The 
commissioners  held  six  sittings  in  the  Jerusalem 
Chamber.  Most  of  their  proceedings  were  directed 
against  the  discipline  of  Laud ;  they  objected  that  the 
communion-table  was  turned  altar-wise,  and  called  an 
altar ;  that  the  people  were  taught  to  bow  towards  it ; 


39S       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


that  the  clergyman  said  the  prayers  turning  to  the 
east ;  that  there  was  a  "  credentia,"  or  "  side-table  ;" 
that  there  were  candlesticks  on  the  altar,  and  a  canopy 
over  it ;  and  that  the  communicants  came  to  the  rails 
to  receive  the  Holy  Communion.  Numerous  changes 
were  demanded  in  the  Prayer- Book.  The  names  of 
some  saints  were  to  be  omitted  in  the  calendar ;  the 
ornaments  rubric  was  to  be  altered ;  apocryphal  les- 
sons to  be  omitted ;  the  "  sure  and  certain  hope,"  in 
the  Burial  Office,  to  be  changed  into  "  knowing  as- 
suredly that  the  dead  shall  rise  again." 

On  May  21  was  introduced  into  the  House  of  Com- 
mons the  "  Root  and  Branch  "  Bill,  for  abolishing  the 
bishops  and  all  other  chief  officers  of  the  Church. 
But  now  two  more  Bishops,  Wren  and  Pearce,  had  been 
impeached,  and  the  Bishops  awoke  to  their  danger ; 
even  Williams'  saw  the  injurious  consequences  of  his 
opposition  to  Laud  ;  and  Hall,  Bishop  of  Exeter,  since 
the  death  of  Andrewes  the  most  learned  amongst 
them,  put  forth  a  Remonstrance,  defending  forms  of 
prayer  and  episcopal  government.  This  was  an- 
swered by  Smectymnuus  ^,  and  the  controversy  known 
as  the  Smectymnuan  controversy  followed,  in  which 
Archbishop  Usher  took  the  side  of  the  bishops,  whilst 
the  poet  Milton,  in  no  fewer  than  five  treatises,  ad- 
vocated that  of  the  Smectymnuans. 

'  It  was  this  prelate  who,  when  the  king  in  his  severe  trial  consulted 
him  as  to  the  signing  Strafford's  death-warrant,  lulled  his  scruples  to  rest 
by  telling  him  that  a  king  had  a  double  conscience,  one  public  and  the 
other  private  ;  and  that  the  former  compelled  him  to  sacrifice  one  whom 
the  latter  would  induce  him  to  save  as  a  friend.  The  king  unfortunately 
rejected  the  straightforward  advice  of  Juxon,  that  he  ought  not  to  act 
against  his  conscience  ;  and  accepted  that  of  Williams. 

''  The  name  was  derived  from  the  initials  of  five  Puritans  who  took 
part  in  the  controversy,  Stephen  Marshall,  Edward  Calamy,  Thomas 
Young,  Matthew  Newcomen,  WiUiam  Spurstow.  - 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  PURITANISM. 


399 


On  July  5,  1 64 1,  the  king  consented  to  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  High  Commission  Court,  and  the  Star 
Chamber  justly  experienced  the  same  fate. 

In  the  autumn  of  the  same  year  the  government 
of  the  Church  by  bishops  was  declared,  in  Scotland, 
to  be  contrary  to  the  Word  of  God  ;  and  its  abolition, 
in  that  country,  was  confirmed  by  the  king. 

In  England,  during  the  recess,  the  Commons  took 
the  unprecedented  step  of  appointing  a  committee  for 
the  transaction  of  business,  who  were  thus  enabled 
to  get  into  their  hands  the  management  of  ecclesi- 
astical affairs.  Lecturers  appointed  by  them  invaded 
the  pulpits,  preached  violence  and  sedition,  denounced 
episcopacy,  and,  indirectly,  even  the  king  himself. 
Orders  were  given  to  the  churchwardens  to  remove 
the  altars  from  the  east  end  of  the  churches,  and  to 
take  away  the  rails  ;  the  churches  were  profaned ;  the 
Litany  depraved ;  the  sacraments  disparaged  ;  mar- 
riages illegally  solemnized,  and  the  ring  omitted  ; 
painted  windows  were  demolished,  monumental  brasses 
defaced,  and  tombs  destroyed. 

The  abolition  of  episcopacy  in  Scotland  excited  the 
hopes  of  the  Puritans  that  the  king  would  also  abolish 
episcopacy  in  England  ;  but  Charles  thought  the  two 
cases  utterly  dissimilar.  In  Scotland,  Episcopacy,  as 
we  have  seen,  had  never  been  fully  established,  and 
was  uncongenial  to  the  character  of  the  people ;  he 
stated  his  belief  that  episcopacy  was  most  agreeable 
to  the  Word  of  God,  and  that  he  was  ready  to  seal  his 
belief  with  his  blood.  To  leave  no  doubt  on  the  mat- 
ter, he  filled  up  the  vacant  sees.  Williams  was  ap- 
pointed Archbishop  of  York  ;  Winniffe,  Dean  of  St. 
Paul's,  to  Lincoln,  in  his  place ;  Hall  was  translated 
from  Exeter  to  Norwich  ;  Brownrigg  was  appointed 


400       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


to  Exeter ;  Bryan  Duppa  from  Chichester  to  Salis- 
bury;  King,  to  Chichester;  Usher,  Archbishop  of 
Armagh,  who  had  sought  refuge  in  England  from  the 
troubles  in  Ireland,  was  appointed  "  in  commendam  " 
Bishop  of  Carlisle ;  Skinner,  to  Oxford  ;  Westfield, 
to  Bristol  ;  whilst  Prideaux,  Regius  Professor  of  Di- 
vinity and  Rector  of  Exeter  College,  Oxford,  became 
Bishop  of  Worcester. 

•  In  1641  Charles  went  to  Scotland,  hoping  to  get  the 
Scots  over  to  his  side ;  he  expected  also  to  get  help 
from  the  Irish  Catholics.  But  whilst  he  was  away, 
news  came  that  the  latter  had  risen  against  the  Pro- 
testants, and  put  many  of  them  to  death.  This  was 
laid  to  the  king's  charge,  and  a  "  Grand  Remon- 
strance" was  drawn  up,  setting  forth  all  the  mis- 
government  of  the  country  since  Charles  came  to  the 
throne,  and  containing  a  violent  attack  upon  the  bi- 
shops, A  charge  of  high  treason  was  brought  against 
them, — they  might  as  well,  it  was  said  at  the  time, 
have  been  accused  of  adjdtcry;  petitions  against  epis- 
copacy, and  counter-petitions  from  persons  of  high 
rank  and  influence,  were  presented ;  the  bishops  were 
subjected  to  violence,  and  ten  of  them  committed  to 
the  Tower.  After  eighteen  days  they  were  released ; 
but  on  February  6,  1642,  all  jurisdiction  was  taken 
from  the  bishops,  and  vested  in  a  committee  of  the 
House  of  Commons ;  the  king,  acting  on  the  advice 
of  the  law  officers, — influenced  also,  it  is  said,  by  the 
queen, — believing  it  to  be  the  only  way  of  saving  the 
Church,  reluctantly  gave  his  consent  to  their  exclu- 
sion from  the  House  of  Lords. 

Charles  had  mortally  offended  the  House  of  Com- 
mons by  accusing  five  members  of  high  treason,  and 
going  to  the  House  with  his  Guards  to  take  them 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  PURITANISM. 


prisoners.  He  had  thus  attempted  to  use  force,  and 
had  shewn  that  he  was  ready  to  set  aside  the  privi- 
leges of  ParHament.  After  this,  war  between  the 
King  and  ParHament  was  inevitable,  and  both  par- 
ties prepared  for  the  conflict.  The  forces  of  the 
country  were  equally  divided :  on  the  side  of  the 
king  were  the  Church  party,  and  the  nobles  and 
the  country  gentlemen ;  whilst  on  the  side  of  Parlia- 
ment were  the  Puritans,  who  mostly  comprised  the 
farmers  and  tradesmen. 

Parliament  could  not  hope  to  succeed  without  the 
aid  of  the  Scots,  and  the  Scots  would  only  join  them 
on  the  condition  of  their  embracing  Presbyterianism. 
There  must  be  one  confession  of  faith,  one  Directory 
of  worship  ;  and  uniformity  was  to  commence  with  the 
abolition  of  papacy  and  prelacy,  for  "  what  hope  can 
there  be  of  one  confession  of  faith,  one  form  of  wor- 
ship and  catechism,  till  prelacy  be  plucked  up  root 
and  branch,  as  a  plant  which  God  hath  not  planted  ?  " 
These  terms,  except  with  regard  to  episcopacy,  were 
unpalatable  to  the  majority  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons ;  but  the  Scots  would  consent  to  no  other.  The 
"  Root  and  Branch  Bill,"  which  could  not  be  passed 
in  a  former  session,  now  passed  the  Commons  in  Sep- 
tember, 1642,  and  the  House  of  Lords  four  months 
later.    On  June  12,  1643,  the  Lords  and  Commons 
passed  an  ordinance  "  for  the  calling  an  assembly  of 
learned  and  godly  divines  and  others,  to  be  consulted 
with  by  the  Parliament  for  the  settling  of  the  govern- 
ment and  liturgy  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  for 
vindicating  and  clearing  the  doctrine  of  the  said  Church 
from  false  aspersions  and  interpretations."    This  as- 
sembly, known  as  the  "  Westminster  Assembly  of 
Divines,"  —  consisting  of  131  ministers,  by  far  the 

D  d 


402        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


greater  number  of  whom  were  Presbyterians,  some 
Independents,  and  some  avowedly  Erastians,  and  30 
laymen,  —  met  for  the  first  time  in  King  Henry  the 
Seventh's  Chapel  on  Sunday,  July  i,  1643.  Amongst 
them  there  were  at  first  a  few  Episcopalians  and  some 
bishops.  Archbishops  Williams  and  Usher,  Bishops 
Brownrigg,  Morton,  Prideaux,  and  Westfield,  with 
Drs.  Hackett,  Hammond,  and  Sanderson ;  but  when 
the  king  issued  a  proclamation  forbidding  the  assem- 
bly, most  of  the  Episcopalians  ^  refused  to  act. 

The  assembly  agreed  to  the  "  Solemn  League  and 
Covenant,"  which  was  ordered  to  be  read,  and  framed 
and  hung  up  in  all  the  churches,  and  to  be  signed  by 
every  person  of  the  age  of  eighteen,  by  February  2, 
1644  ;  whilst  a  Directory  for  Public  Worship  was  sub- 
stituted for  the  Prayer- Book,  and  ordered  to  come 
into  use  January  3,  1645.  Thus  a  strong  weapon  was 
placed  in  the  hands  of  their  enemies  of  discovering 
and  deposing  the  loyal,  or,  as  they  were  called,  the 
malignant  clergy,  refusal  to  sign  being  the  proof  of 
malignancy.  The  king,  on  November  13,  issued  from 
Oxford  a  proclamation  forbidding  the  use  of  the  Di- 
rectory, but  the  Houses  of  Parliament  had  adopted 
a  counterfeit  Great  Seal,  which  they  affixed  to  their 
ordinances,  so  that  the  royal  authority  was  now  ren- 
dered unnecessary.  The  "  Committee  for  the  re- 
moval of  scandalous  ministers,"  examined  those  scan- 
dalous or  malignant  clergy  as  were  accused,  sometimes 
by  the  meanest  and  worst  of  the  parishioners ;  be- 
tween 2,000  and  3,000  clergy,  amongst  whom  were 
some  of  the  most  learned  and  devout,  are  said  to  have 

'  Clarendon  says  there  were  not  above  twenty  in  the  assembly  who 
were  not  the  avowed  enemies  of  the  Church,  many  of  them  men  of  in- 
famous character  and  scandalous  ignorance. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  PURITANISM. 


been  deprived ;  and  on  them,  in  some  cases  only,  a 
pension  not  exceeding  a  fifth  of  the  vakie  of  their  be- 
nefices was  bestowed. 

The  life  of  Laud  was  part  of  the  price  demanded 
by  the  Scots  for  their  alliance.  He  had,  indeed,  met 
with  cruel  treatment.  On  March  i,  1641,  he  had 
been  committed  to  the  Tower  ;  after  being  detained 
there  three  years,  and  fined  thirty-six  thousand  pounds, 
— sixteen  thousand  as  compensation  to  Prynne,  Bur- 
ton, and  Bastwick,  and  twenty  thousand  for  his  pro- 
ceedings in  the  last  Convocation, — he  was,  on  March 
12,  1644,  brought  to  trial.  A  bill  of  attainder  was 
passed  against  him  in  the  House  of  Commons  on 
Nov.  13,  and  in  the  House  of  Lords  on  Jan.  4  follow- 
ing;  and  on  January  10,  at  the  age  of  seventy-two. 
he  was  brought  to  the  scaffold  on  Tower-hill. 

No  man  is  more  abused  in  history,  and  few  men 
more  unjustly,  than  Laud.  Throughout  his  life  he 
had  to  contend  with  almost  unparalleled  difficulties ; 
and  the  troubles  which  came  upon  him  and  the  Church 
were  due  rather  to  the  faults  of  others  than  his  own 
faults,  and  to  causes  over  which,  unless  he  evaded 
the  responsibilities  of  his  office,  he  had  no  control. 

A  short  review  of  his  life  may  serve  to  place  his 
character  in  its  true  light.  Born  at  Reading  in  1573, 
he  became  Fellow  of  St.  John's,  Oxford,  at  a  time 
when  theology  in  the  University  had  undergone  a 
complete  change  from  Romanism  to  Puritanism  ;  a  ten- 
dency prevailed  to  identify  the  English  with  the 
foreign  Reformation,  and  to  represent  the  English 
Church  as  a  mere  sect,  created  at  that  time.  Against 
this  teaching.  Laud  insisted  that  the  English  Church 
descended  by  succession  from  the  time  of  the  Apo- 
stles, and  that  the  Reformation  was  only  a  single  in- 

D  d  2 


404       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

cident  in  its  history.  This  brought  down  on  him  the 
hostiHty  of  Dr.  Abbot,  the  future  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury, at  that  time  Master  of  University  College 
and  Vice-Chancellor,  who  with  his  brother,  the  Master 
of  Balliol,  was  the  leader  of  the  Puritan  party;  and 
so  strong  was  the  opposition  to  Laud,  that  he  himself 
says,  when  he  was  Proctor,  University  men  were 
ashamed  to  be  seen  speaking  to  him,  or  to  notice 
him  in  the  streets.  Notwithstanding  the  opposition 
of  Abbot,  who  denounced  him  as  a  papist,  Laud  was 
elected  President  of  St.  John's  in  161 1  ;  Abbot  ap- 
pealed to  King  James,  who  not  only  confirmed  his 
election,  but  was  so  pleased  with  him  that  he  ap- 
pointed him  his  chaplain.  Honours  now  showered  fast 
on  him.  In  1614  he  became  Prebendary  of  Lincoln; 
in  1615,  Archdeacon  of  Huntingdon;  in  1616,  Dean 
of  Gloucester,  "  a  shell,"  as  the  king  called  it,  "  with- 
out a  kernel;"  here,  as  at  Oxford,  the  "no  popery" 
cry  was  raised,  and  he  was  stigmatised  as  a  papist.  It 
is  not  difficult  to  understand  what  that  cry  meant. 
The  fabric  of  the  cathedral  was  falling  into  decay ; 
the  services  were  like  those  of  a  conventicle ;  whilst 
its  bishop.  Dr.  Miles  Smith,  was  an  advanced  Cal- 
vinist.  Laud  at  once  set  himself  to  work  ;  he  moved 
the  Holy  Table  from  the  body  of  the  church  to  the 
chancel  wall ;  and  at  the  end  of  one  year  things  were 
done  in  the  cathedral  decently  and  in  order.  But  this 
so  excited  the  wrath  of  the  Calvinist  bishop,  that  he 
vowed  he  would  never  again  (and  he  strictly  kept  the 
vow)  enter  the  cathedral  whilst  Laud  was  Dean.  The 
"  no  popery "  cry  meant  that  Laud  had  a  duty  to  do, 
and  that  he  did  that  duty  fearlessly. 

In  1620  Laud  became  Prebendary  of  Westminster, 
and  Bishop  of  St.  David's,  and  resigned  the  President- 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  PURITANISM. 


ship  of  St.  John's.  In  1625  James  died,  but  the  high  re- 
putation which  Laud  enjoyed  under  him  was  increased 
under  Charles,  who,  in  1626,  translated  him  to  Bath 
and  Wells ;  whilst  in  the  same  year  he  succeeded  the 
great  Bishop  Andrewes  as  Dean  of  the  Chapel  Royal. 
In  1628,  Montaigne,  Bishop  of  London,  whose  laxity 
of  discipline,  coupled  with  the  Puritanism  of  the  pri- 
mate, was  a  principal  cause  of  the  calamities  of  Laud's 
life,  was  transferred  to  York,  and  Laud  succeeded  him 
in  London.  In  the  same  year  Buckingham  was  mur- 
dered ;  and  now  Laud,  against  his  will,  became  with 
Wentworth  the  chief  minister,  and  so  henceforward 
partaker  in  the  faults  and  calamities  of  the  throne.  In 
1630,  notwithstanding  the  opposition  of  his  old  enemy 
Williams,  who,  as  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  was  visitor  of 
four  colleges,  he  became  Chancellor  of  Oxford,  and 
in  1633  Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 

Such  a  career  was  one  of  almost  unparalleled  suc- 
cess. In  every  position  which  he  occupied — as  Dean 
of  Gloucester,  as  Bishop  of  St.  David's,  of  London,  and 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury — he  left  his  mark  for  good. 
In  his  articles  of  visitation,  questions  were  asked  as 
to  the  decent  performance  of  divine  service,  as  to  bap- 
tism, whether  there  was  a  font  of  stone,  and  not,  as 
was  common,  a  mere  basin ;  as  to  the  position  of  the 
Holy  Table  ;  and  whether  the  Holy  Eucharist  was  de- 
livered to  each  communicant  separately.  In  this  man- 
ner abuses  were  rectified,  slovenliness  discouraged, 
churches  restored,  and  men  of  ability  promoted.  It 
is  to  the  Caroline  divines  we  look  back  as  the  great 
authorities  of  our  Anglican  Theology ;  here,  again,  it 
is  to  Laud  (himself  indebted  to  one  of  the  greatest  men 
who  ever  adorned  episcopacy,  Bishop  Andrewes)  that 
we  owe  a  great  debt  of  gratitude.    Through  Laud  it 


406       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

was  that  Jeremy  Taylor,  the  son  of  a  barber  at  Cam- 
bridge, and  educated  at  that  University,  was  preferred 
to  a  Fellowship  at  All  Souls,  Oxford.  Laud  could  ad- 
mire the  learning  as  well  as  the  sincerity  of  Bishop 
Hall,  who  not  only  differed  from,  but  openly  rebuked, 
without  offending  him.  To  him  Bishop  Sanderson, 
Archbishop  Bramhall,  Dr.  Peter  Heylyn,  George  Her- 
bert (whose  early  death  at  thirty-nine  cut  short  one 
of  the  purest  and  most  promising  lives  in  the  English 
Church),  Hammond,  one  of  the  greatest  divines  of 
that  or  any  other  age,  and  Chillingworth,  who  through 
Laud  was  induced  to  return  from  Rome  to  the  Church 
which  he  had  forsaken,  owed  encouragement  or  ad- 
vancement. Even  his  enemies  will  allow  that  he  was 
a  generous  patron  of  learning  ;  of  his  great  munificence 
the  Church  and  his  University  are  sufficient  witnesses. 
At  a  time  when  the  mere  observance  of  the  Church's 
law  was  branded  as  Popery,  Laud  was  accused  of 
being  an  innovator  and  a  Romanist.  So  far  from 
being  a  Romanist,  he  brought  back,  as  we  have  seen, 
Chillingworth  into  the  Church  ;  and  it  was  his  oppo- 
sition to  Rome  which  entailed  on  him  the  bitter  ani- 
mosity of  the  queen,  and  was  one  secret  of  the  cala- 
mities of  his  life.  He  was  an  object  of  hatred  to  the 
Romanists  no  less  than  to  the  Puritans ;  there  is  rea- 
son to  believe  that  the  offer  of  a  cardinal's  hat,  which 
we  have  it  on  his  own  authority  was  made  to  him  from 
Rome,  was  made  under  the  hostile  motive  of  leading 
him  into  a  trap,  and  thus  exposing  him  to  the  male- 
volence of  his  enemies. 

Yet  one  of  the  accusations  brought  against  him  at 
his  trial  was,  of  "  wishing  to  subvert  God's  true  re- 
ligion, and  to  set  up  a  Popish  superstition  instead." 
This  accusation  can  be  best  answered  in  his  own 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  PURITANISM.  407 

words  ;  his  last  declaration  before  his  execution,  when 
he  had  nothing  to  gain,  the  sincerity  therefore  of 
which  no  one  can  question.  "  I  was  born  and  bap- 
tized in  the  bosom  of  the  Church  of  England,  esta- 
blished by  law ;  in  that  profession  I  have  ever  since 
lived,  and  in  that  I  die.  This  is  now  no  time  to  dis- 
semble with  God,  least  of  all  in  matters  of  religion  ; 
and  therefore  I  desire  it  may  be  remembered  I  have 
always  lived  in  the  Protestant  religion  established  in 
England,  and  in  that  I  come  now  to  die.  I  can  bring 
no  witness  of  my  heart  and  the  intention  thereof,  there- 
fore I  must  come  to  my  protestation  not  at  the  bar, 
but  my  protestation  at  the  hour  and  instant  of  my 
death ;  in  which  I  hope  all  men  will  be  such  charitable 
Christians,  as  not  to  think  I  would  die  and  dissemble, 
being  instantly  to  give  God  an  account  of  the  truth 
of  it.  I  do  therefore  here,  in  the  presence  of  God 
and  His  holy  angels,  take  it  upon  my  death  that  I 
never  endeavoured  the  subversion  of  law  or  religion." 
The  truth  of  this  statement,  made  at  such  a  time, 
is  of  course  final.  Another  accusation  is  brought 
against  him,  that  he  was  a  bigot.  If  to  obey  the  laws 
of  his  Church  ;  if  to  exact  conformity,  in  which  respect, 
whilst  he  was  certainly  in  contrast  with  his  Puritanical 
predecessors,  he  was  not  more  rigid  than  Archbishops 
Whitgift  and  Bancroft ;  if  a  love  for  antiquity,  and 
a  respect  for  decent  ritual  be  bigotry,  then,  but  not 
otherwise.  Laud,  in  company  with  some  of  the  greatest 
prelates  of  our  Church,  may  be  called  a  bigot. 

There  was  something  grand  about  his  end.  When 
the  passing  of  the  ordinance  was  signified  to  him,  "  he 
neither  entertained  the  news  with  a  stoical  apathy, 
nor  waited  his  fate  with  weak  and  womanish  lamenta- 
tion ;  but  heard  it  with  so  even  and  smooth  a  temper, 


408       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


as  shewed  he  was  neither  ashamed  to  live,  nor  afraid 
to  die  :"  and  when  he  was  conducted  to  the  scaffold, 
"  he  ascended  it  with  such  a  cheerful  countenance,  as 
if  he  had  mounted  it  rather  to  behold  a  triumph  than 
to  be  made  a  sacrifice,  and  came  not  there  to  die,  but 
to  be  translated 

It  had  been  his  wish  to  be  buried  in  the  chapel  of 
his  college  of  St.  John's.  At  first  he  was  buried  in 
the  church  of  All  Hallows,  near  the  Tower ;  but  after 
the  Restoration  his  bones  were  transferred  to  the 
chapel  of  St.  John's,  where  they  were  deposited  under 
the  altar. 

The  nation  was  now  divided  into  two  religious 
bodies,  the  Presbyterians  and  Independents.  The 
different  sects  known  formerly  as  Brownists,  or  Bar- 
rowists,  had  settled  down  under  the  name  of  Inde- 
pendents or  Congregationalists,  and  under  the  guid- 
ance of  Oliver  Cromwell  had  become  supreme,  not 
only  in  the  House  of  Commons but  also  in  the 
army.  The  private  soldiers  of  Cromwell's  troop  were 
men  of  superior  birth  and  education,  who  entered  the 
army  of  their  own  free-will,  not  so  much  to  gain  a 
livelihood,  as  from  a  political  and  religious  zeal ;  their 
religious  charter  was  liberty  of  conscience,  whilst  they 
regarded  the  king  not  only  as  their  own  foe,  but  the 
foe  of  God.  Cromwell,  who  had  gained  renown  as  a 
soldier  at  the  battle  of  Edgehill,  soon  drilled  these  men 
into  such  an  excellent  state  of  discipline,  that  Crom- 
well's Ironsides  became  celebrated  as  the  best  troops 
in  Europe ;  and  though  there  were  no  doubt  hypo- 

"  Quarterly  Review,  x.  99. 

"  At  this  time  arose  the  two  parties  which,  under  the  name  of  Cavahers 
and  Roundheads,  Tories  and  Whigs,  Conservatives  and  Liberals,  have 
since  then  divided  the  nation. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  PURITANISM.  409 

crites  amongst  them,  yet  for  the  most  part  they  were, 
if  fanatical,  yet  sober  and  God-fearing  men  :  they  met 
regularly  in  their  barracks  for  prayer  and  devotion, 
so  that  even  the  Royalists  allowed,  no  oath  was  ever 
heard,  nor  drunkenness  or  outrages  ever  witnessed 
in  their  camp.  With  these  troops  Cromwell  gained 
a  decisive  victory  over  Charles  at  Marston  Moor  in 
1644,  and  again  at  Naseby  in  1645. 

Charles,  unable  to  raise  any  more  troops,  now  fixed 
his  hopes  on  the  Presbyterians  to  help  him  against 
the  Independents,  and  so  took  refuge  in  Scotland  : 
the  Scots,  however,  gave  him  up  to  the  English  Par- 
liament in  1647. 

It  was  Cromwxll's  wish  to  save  the  king's  life  ;  but 
the  military  saints  thirsted  for  his  blood,  and  even 
threatened  Cromwell  himself,  and  a  mutiny  broke  out 
which  even  he  could  with  difficulty  quell.  He  saw 
that  his  attempts  to  save  Charles  were  in  vain,  so  he 
left  him  to  his  fate.  A  revolutionary  tribunal  pro- 
nounced the  king  to  be  a  tyrant,  a  traitor,  a  murderer, 
and  a  public  enemy;  so  on  January  30,  1649,  he  was 
beheaded  in  the  presence  of  thousands  of  spectators 
in  front  of  the  banquet-hall  of  his  own  palace  °.  Thus 
the  Puritans,  who  had  first  destroyed  the  Church, 
destroyed  after  it  the  throne  also. 

But  as  the  influence  of  the  Independents  increased, 
so  that  of  the  Puritans  grew  weaker  and  weaker.  The 
Presbyterian  ministers  were  glad  to  take  themselves 
off  to  the  country  livings,  from  which  they  had  ex- 
pelled the  lawful  owners  ;  so  the  Westminster  As- 
sembly gradually  melted  away,  and  came  to  an  end. 

°  Macaulay,  i.  128. 


CHAPTER  VII. 


THE  COMPLETION  OF  THE  REFORMATION,  AND  THE 
LAST  ACT  OF  UNIFORMITY.  CHARLES  II. 

POR  eleven  years  England  was  virtually  governed 
by  the  sword ;  the  government,  which  was  nomi- 
nally a  Republic  under  the  Protectorate  of  Cromwell, 
being  in  reality  a  despotism,  limited  only  by  the  wis- 
dom and  moderation  of  the  despot.  An  oath,  called 
the  "  Engagement,"  was  taken  to  the  new  government, 
and  a  universal  toleration  was  allowed,  except  to  pa- 
pacy and  prelacy.  Ordination  of  ministers  was  en- 
trusted to  thirty-eight  Commissioners,  called  "  Triers," 
most  of  them  being  Independents,  some  Presbyterians, 
and  a  few  Baptists  :  they  were  invested  with  full 
powers,  not  only  to  refuse  or  reject  candidates,  but 
also  retrospectively  over  those  who  had  been  already 
admitted  to  benefices.  Nor  was  this  all.  The  ejected 
clergy  had  sometimes  been  able  to  pick  up  a  pre- 
carious living  by  acting  as  schoolmasters,  or  chaplains 
to  private  families ;  these  also  were  subjected  to  the 
Triers  by  an  ordinance  for  "  ejecting  scandalous,  ig- 
norant, and  insufficient  ministers  and  schoolmasters." 
Gauden  puts  the  number  of  ejected  clergy  at  eight 
thousand.  When  it  was  too  late,  Cromwell  repented 
of  all  the  evil  that  had  been  done  to  the  clergy,  and 
began  to  understand  the  intolerant  spirit  of  the  Pres- 
byterians ;  "  that  insolent  sect,"  as  he  called  them, 
"  which  could  tolerate  none  but  itself : "  and  he  would 
willingly  have  restored  the  Church  and  the  monarchy. 
His  last  years  were  consumed  in  remorse  and  bitter- 
ness.   Eighteen  months  of  anarchy  ensued  after  his 


THE  COMPLETION  OF  THE  REFORMATION,   ETC.     4 II 

death,  and  disunion  pervaded  the  army ;  by  that  time 
the  nation  had  become  sensible  of  its  degradation,  and 
longed  for  the  restoration  of  the  Church  and  throne  ; 
even  the  Presbyterians,  now  that  they  were  thrown 
into  the  background  by  the  Independents,  desired  the 
return  of  the  king.  So  that  when  Charles  returned  in 
1660,  the  Restoration  was  welcomed  with  joy  on  all 
sides.  Everything  that  had  been  done  since  the  out- 
break of  the  civil  war  was  undone.  The  Church  was 
without  difficulty  set  up  again,  for,  since  the  ordinances 
of  the  Long  Parliament  had  not  received  the  royal 
sanction,  the  deprived  clergy  were  without  difficulty 
reinstated  ;  the  bishops  took  possession  of  their  dio- 
ceses ;  and,  by  the  resumption  of  the  Liturgy  in  his 
private  chapel,  the  king  shewed  that  Puritanism  was 
at  an  end,  and  the  Church  of  England  once  more 
established. 

Only  nine  bishops  had  survived  the  Rebellion  :  it 
was  necessary,  therefore,  to  fill  up  the  vacant  sees. 
Juxon,  old  and  infirm,  but  the  best  appointment  that, 
under  the  circumstances,  could  be  made,  was  raised  to 
the  primacy;  Accepted  Frewen  was  appointed  to  York, 
Sheldon  to  London ;  Cosin,  Dean  of  Peterborough,  to 
Durham ;  Sanderson  to  Lincoln ;  Duppa  from  Salis- 
bury to  Winchester;  Bryan  Walton,  the  author  of 
the  Polyglot  Bible,  to  Chester ;  Gauden  to  Exeter, 
Henchman  to  Salisbury,  Lancy  to  Peterborough,  Stone 
to  Carlisle ;  the  great  and  good  Dr.  Hammond  was 
nominated  to  Worcester,  but  died  before  his  con- 
secration, and  Morley  was  appointed  in  his  place. 

But  we  are  anticipating  events ;  Charles  had  is- 
sued from  Breda  the  following  Declaration  :  "  We  do 
declare  a  liberty  to  tender  consciences,  and  that  no 
man  shall  be  disquieted  or  called  in  question  for 


412        THE  COMPLETION  OF  THE  REFORMATION, 


differences  of  opinion  in  matters  of  religion,  which 
do  not  disturb  the  peace  of  the  kingdom ;  and  that 
we  shall  be  ready  to  consent  to  such  an  Act  of  Par- 
liament as,  upon  mature  deliberation,  shall  be  offered 
to  us,  for  the  full  granting  that  indulgence." 

On  May  4,  deputations  from  both  Houses  of  Par- 
liament were  sent  to  the  Hague,  to  conduct  the  king 
to  England.  At  the  same  time,  a  Presbyterian  depu- 
tation, including  Reynolds,  Calamy,  Case,  and  Manton, 
were  sent  to  meet  him,  in  hope  of  persuading  him  that 
the  English  Prayer-Book,  having  been  so  long  dis- 
continued, should  not  be  restored,  and  that  he  would 
not  allow  the  use  of  the  Prayer-Book  or  the  Surplice  in 
his  own  chapel.  The  king  indignantly  refused  :  he 
told  them  that  "  though  he  was  bound  for  the  present 
to  tolerate  much  disorder  and  indecency  in  the  exer- 
cise of  God's  worship,  he  would  never,  in  the  least  de- 
gree, by  his  own  practice,  discountenance  the  good  old 
order  of  the  Church  in  which  he  had  been  bred  \" 

But  they  were  not  to  be  put  off  so  easily,  and  were 
constantly  troubling  the  king  with  their  complaints  ; 
so,  by  his  command,  they  assembled  at  Sion  College, 
and  drew  up  a  list  of  their  requirements.  Their  de- 
mands, which  were  mainly  due  to  Baxter,  were  nothing 
short  of  the  concession  on  the  part  of  the  Church  of  all 
the  points  between  the  Church  and  the  Puritans.  The 
king,  with  the  view  of  promoting  union,  issued  on 
October  25  a  Declaration,  in  consequence  of  which, 
a  conference  was  arranged  to  be  held  in  the  Bishop 
of  London's  lodgings  in  the  Savoy.  The  conference 
began  its  sittings  on  April  15,  1661,  and  concluded  on 
July  24.  The  commissioners  appointed  were  autho- 
rized by  letters  patent  to  "  advise  upon  a  review  of  the 

*  Clarendon,  Hist,  of  the  Great  Rebellion. 


AND  THE  LAST  ACT  OF  UNIFORMITY.  413 


said  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  comparing  the  same 
with  the  most  ancient  Liturgies  which  have  been  used 
in  the  Church  in  the  primitive  and  purest  times.  .  .  . 
And,  if  occasion  be,  to  make  such  reasonable  and 
necessary  alterations,  corrections,  and  amendments 
therein,  as  ...  .  shall  be  agreed  upon  to  be  needful 
and  expedient  for  giving  satisfaction  unto  tender  con- 
sciences, and  the  restoring  and  continuing  of  peace 
and  unity  in  the  churches  under  our  protection  and 
government ;  but  avoiding  as  much  as  may  be  all 
unnecessary  alterations  from  the  forms  and  Liturgy 
wherewith  people  are  already  acquainted,  and  have 
so  long  received  in  the  Church  of  England."  The 
Presbyterians  brought  forward  all  the  old  objections 
which  had  been  used  by  the  Puritans  for  a  hundred 
years,  and  when  the  four  months  allowed  by  the  king 
had  expired,  nothing  was  effected ;  so  the  commis- 
sioners reported  to  the  king  that,  as  to  the  Church's 
welfare,  unity,  and  peace  they  were  all  agreed,  but 
as  to  the  means  to  be  employed  they  could  come 
to  no  agreement. 

The  "  Convention "  Parliament  havingf  been  dis- 
solved,  a  new  House  of  Commons,  "  more  zealous  for 
royalty,"  says  Macaulay,  "  than  the  king,  and  more 
zealous  for  episcopacy  than  the  bishops,"  was  elected 
in  May,  1661,  and  immediately  resolved  to  introduce 
the  old  Prayer-Book.  But  when  the  Savoy  Conference 
was  ended,  the  king  resolved  to  submit  the  Prayer- 
Book  to  Convocation ;  so  a  licence  was  issued  on 
October  lo,  directing  the  Convocation  of  Canterbury 
to  review  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  and  the  Or- 
dinal, and  on  November  22  a  similar  licence  was  sent 
to  the  Archbishop  of  York.  The  Convocation  of  Can- 
terbury met,  November  21,  and  immediately  entered 


414        THE  COMPLETION  OF  THE  REFORMATION, 

upon  the  work  of  revision,  the  following  committee 
being  appointed  for  that  purpose  :  Cosin  Bishop  of 
Durham,  Wren  of  Ely,  Skinner  of  Oxford,  Warner  of 
Rochester,  Henchman  of  Salisbury,  Morley  of  Worces- 
ter, Sanderson  of  Lincoln,  and  Nicholson  of  Gloucester. 
The  Convocation  of  York  agreed  to  be  represented 
by  proxies,  three  being  selected  from  the  Lower  House 
of  Canterbury  province,  and  five  from  that  of  York, 
of  whom  Sancroft,  then  chaplain  to  Bishop  Cosin,  was 
one,  and  acted  as  Secretary  to  the  commissioners. 

The  committee  met  at  Ely  House,  and,  as  the  work 
had  been  foreseen,  and  certain  parts,  such  as  a  Form 
of  Prayer  for  May  29,  and  the  office  for  Adult  Baptism, 
had  been  already  agreed  upon  ;  and  especially  as  they 
had  the  valuable  collections  of  Bishop  Cosin,  himself 
the  most  learned  ritualist  amongst  the  bishops,  who 
had  also  been  librarian  to  Bishop  Andrewes  and 
Bishop  Overall,  for  a  basis,  they  were  enabled  to 
proceed  rapidly  with  their  review.  On  November  23, 
a  portion  of  the  work  was  delivered  to  the  Lower 
House  of  Convocation,  which  returned  it  on  the  27th, 
with  a  schedule  of  amendments.  The  whole  work 
was  finished  on  December  20,  1661,  and  was  unani- 
mously received,  approved,  and  subscribed  by  the 
clergy  of  both  Houses  of  Convocation,  and  of  both 
provinces.  For  two  months  it  seems  to  have  been 
detained  by  the  king  in  council ;  but  on  February  25, 
1662,  it  was  brought  to  the  House  of  Lords  by  the 
Lord  Chancellor,  with  a  message  from  his  majesty, 
expressing  his  full  approval  and  allowance  of  the  same  ; 
on  March  1 7,  it  was  resolved  by  the  House  that  that 
"shall  be  the  book  to  which  the  Act  of  Uniformity 
shall  relate ; "  on  March  18,  the  Lord  Chancellor  re- 
turned thanks  to  Convocation  for  the  care  shewn  in 


AND  THE  LAST  ACT  OF  UNIFORMITY.  415 

its  revisal ;  and  on  April  i6,  it  was  accepted  by  the 
Commons  exactly  as  it  was  sent  down,  the  point 
whether  debate  should  be  permitted  on  the  amend- 
ments made  by  Convocation  being  negatived  by  96 
to  90  votes,  although  the  House  asserted  its  right  of 
debating  upon  them,  had  it  felt  so  inclined  ^. 

Meanwhile,  the  Act  of  Uniformity  had  been  under 
consideration  of  Parliament,  where  it  was  much  dis- 
cussed in  the  Commons,  resulting  in  a  conference 
being  held  between  the  two  Houses.  The  amend- 
ments of  the  Commons  were  mainly  agreed  to  by  the 
House  of  Lords  on  May  9  ;  and  thus  our  Prayer- 
Book,  which  was  attached  to  the  Act  of  Uniformity, 
comes  down  to  us  with  the  authority  of  Convocation, 
of  Parliament,  and  of  the  Crown,  the  final  words  being 
spoken  on  May  19,  1662,  "  Le  Roy,  remercient  ses 
bons  Subjects,  accepte  leur  Benevolence,  et  Ainsi  Le 
Veult." 

This  Prayer-Book  has  never  substantially  been  al- 
tered since ;  and  although  an  attempt  to  remodel  it 
in  a  directly  Puritan  direction  was  made  in  the  reign 
of  William  HL,  the  Prayer-Book  of  1662  is  the  same 
as  is  used  now.  At  the  review  in  1662,  a  large  num- 
ber of  alterations  were  made,  but  many  of  these  of 
little  or  no  importance  from  a  doctrinal  point  of  view, 
or  as  affecting  subsequent  controversies  ;  but  one  es- 
pecially requires  notice,  as  bearing  upon  the  questions 
of  the  present  day.  The  first  is  what  is  called  the 
"  Ornaments  Rubric."  The  standard  chosen  in  the 
Prayer-Book  and  Act  of  Uniformity  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth was,  as  we  have  seen,  that  which  prevailed  "  by 

For  the  proceedings  of  the  Houses  of  Lords  and  Commons,  and  of 
Convocation,  during  these  debates,  see  Introduction  to  the  Successive 
Revisions  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  by  James  Parker. 


41 6        THE  COMPLETION  OF  THE  REFORMATION, 


the  authority  of  Parliament  in  the  second  year  of 
King  Edward  VI.,"  not  that  prevaiHng  in  1552.  But 
with  regard  to  this  rubric,  an  attempt  has  been  made 
to  import  into  it  other  considerations,  based  on  fanci- 
ful interpretations  of  certain  passages  in  the  Adver- 
tisements of  1565,  and  the  Jacobean  Canons  of  1604. 
The  rubric,  however,  of  1662  passes  over  all  these 
changes,  and  enacts,  "  And  here  it  is  to  be  noted,  that 
such  Ornaments  of  the  Church  and  of  the  Ministers 
thereof,  at  all  times  of  their  Ministration,  shall  be  re- 
tained and  be  in  use  as  were  in  this  Church  of  Eng- 
land by  the  authority  of  Parliament,  in  the  second 
year  of  the  reign  of  King  Edward  VI.  ;"  that  is  to 
say,  a  via  media  was  adopted  between  the  more  ex- 
cessive ritual  in  use  before  the  second  year,  and  the 
lower  ritual  prescribed  under  the  Second  Prayer- Book. 
It  is  unreasonable  to  imasfine  that  a  Convocation  of 
bishops  and  other  divines  would,  at  a  time  when  the 
question  of  ritual  was  more  vehemently  debated  even 
than  it  is  now,  have  inserted  in  the  plainest  language 
words  which  were  to  be  interpreted  in  the  very  oppo- 
site meaning  to  that  which  they  convey  ^ 

The  Act  of  Uniformity,  which  was  promoted,  not 
by  Convocation,  but  by  the  House  of  Commons,  and 
which  was  the  death-knell  of  Puritanism,  was  to  come 
into  operation  on  St.  Bartholomew's  Day,  1662.  The 
act  required  every  beneficed  person  before  that  day 
to  read  the  prayers  according  to  the  amended  book 
in  his  church  or  chapel,  and  declare  his  unfeigned 
assent  and  consent  to  all  things  contained  in  it  ;  and 
all  succeeding  beneficed  persons  to  do  this  within  two 

"  The  author  is,  of  course,  aware  of  the  different  interpretation  which 
has  been  put  upon  this  rubric  ;  he  cannot,  however,  refrain  from  stating, 
with  all  deference,  the  common-sense  interpretation  of  the  rubric. 


A 


AND  THE  LAST  ACT  OF  UNIFORMITY. 


417 


months  after  taking  possession  of  their  benefices  ;  also, 
every  ecclesiastical  person,  and  every  tutor  and  school- 
master, to  make  a  declaration  of  the  illegality  of  taking 
arms  against  the  king  and  of  conformity  to  the  Li- 
turgy, and  during  the  next  twenty  years  a  further  de- 
claration that  the  Sok)mt  League  and  Covenant  was 
an  unlawful  oath,  and  of  no  obligation.  It  deprived 
of  their  benefices  all  persons  who  were  not  in  Holy 
Orders  by  episcopal  ordination,  unless  they  were  or- 
dained priest  or  deacon  before  the  feast  of  St.  Bar- 
tholomew. It  provided  for  the  toleration  of  aliens 
of  the  foreign  reformed  Churches,  allowed  or  to  be 
allowed  in  England.  The  Morning  and  Evening 
Prayer,  and  all  other  prayers  and  services,  might  be 
used  in  Latin  in  the  chapels  of  colleges,  and  in  Convo- 
cations. All  lecturers  and  preachers  to  be  approved 
and  licensed  by  the  archbishop  or  bishop  of  the  dio- 
cese. Common  Prayer  to  be  read  before  sermons, 
except  at  the  public  university  sermon.  The  Bishops 
of  Hereford,  St.  David's,  St.  Asaph,  Bangor,  and  Llan- 
daff,  to  take  order  for  a  true  and  exact  translation  of 
the  book  into  the  British  or  Welsh  tongue 

When  St.  Bartholomew's  Day  came  {Black  Bar- 
tholomew  it  was  called),  some  eight  hundred  Presby- 
terians were  ejected  from  benefices  (Nonconformists 
without  reason  overstate  the  number, — some,  as  Bax- 
ter, placing  it  at  eighteen  hundred  ;  others,  as  Ca- 
lamy,  at  two  thousand),  and  the  day  was  compared 
to  the  St.  Bartholomew's  Day  which  witnessed  the 
cruel  massacre  of  the  Huguenots.  But  even  at  the 
highest  calculation,  the  number  of  Presbyterians  ejected 
was  less  than  a  quarter  of  those  Episcopalians  whose 
benefices  they  had  usurped,  who,  it  must  be  remem- 

^  Collier,  Eccl.  Hist. ;  and  Proctor,  Book  of  Com.  Prayer,  p.  142,  n. 


4l8        THE  COMPLETION  OF  THE  REFORMATION, 


bered,  had  been  ejected  by  no  lawful  authority,  and 
whose  only  fault  was  their  faithful  allegiance  to  their 
Church  and  King.  Intolerance  is  always  to  be  depre- 
cated, but  this  act  of  retribution  was  the  necessary 
consequence  of  former  intolerance  and  persecution, 
Puritanism  had  overthrown  the  Church,  the  very  es- 
sence of  which  was  episcopacy,  and  had  murdered  its 
chief  pastor.  Was  it  to  be  rewarded  for  this  ?  There 
was  only  one  course  to  be  pursued.  When  the  Church 
was  restored,  episcopacy  and  its  Liturgy  were  of  neces- 
sity restored  with  it ;  there  was  no  new  system,  but 
only  the  old  revived.  The  ejection  of  those  who 
would  not  conform,  however  much  to  be  lamented 
(for  amongst  them  were  pious  and  learned  men),  was 
necessary ;  but  even  then  its  leading  men  were  of- 
fered the  highest  posts  in  the  Church,  Reynolds 
actually  accepted  the  see  of  Norwich,  whilst  those  of 
Lichfield  and  Hereford  were  offered  to,  but  refused 
by,  Baxter  and  Calamy. 

Nor  were  the  Nonconformists  altogether  opposed 
to  the  restoration  of  episcopacy  ;  many  of  them,  on 
the  contrary,  remained  in  communion  with  the  Church, 
and  attended  the  services.  But  they  expected  tolera- 
tion for  themselves ;  (toleration  to  Romanists  they  re- 
garded with  abhorrence),  and  many  of  those  who  were 
ejected  continued  to  hold  meetings  and  to  preach  ;  in 
consequence  of  this,  in  1664,  the  first  Conventicle  Act 
was  passed,  which  rendered  any  one  above  sixteen 
years  of  age,  who  attended  any  religious  meeting  of 
more  than  five  people  where  any  other  than  the  Li- 
turgy and  practice  of  the  Church  of  England  was 
used,  liable  to  a  fine  and  imprisonment;  and  for  the 
third  offence,  transportation  for  life. 

Still,  the  ejected  clergy  continued  their  preaching  in 


AND   THE  LAST  ACT  OF  UNIFORMITY. 


419 


secret,  and  Parliament,  which  at  the  time  when  the 
Plague  was  raging  in  London,  held  its  sittings  at 
Oxford,  passed  the  Five  Mile  Act,  by  which  all  Non- 
conforming ministers  were  oblio^ed  to  take  an  oath 
that  it  was  not  lawful  under  any  pretence  to  take  arms 
against  the  king,  or  to  endeavour  to  subvert  the  go- 
vernment either  of  Church  or  State.  Those  who 
were  unwilling  to  take  the  oath  were  not  allowed, 
except  in  travelling,  to  come  within  five  miles  of  any 
city,  town,  or  borough,  or  of  any  parish  of  which  he 
had  been  minister,  under  a  penalty  of  forty  pounds, 
and  six  months  imprisonment. 

These  penal  laws  had,  during  the  ravages  of  the 
Plague,  fallen  partly  into  abeyance  ;  so,  in  1670,  a 
second  Conventicle  Act  was  passed,  with  a  view  to 
their  stricter  observance.  A  fine  was  imposed  for 
attendance  at  any  dissenting  chapel  ;  any  magistrate 
might  enter  the  chapel  and  disperse  the  assembly ; 
and  so  rigorously  was  the  act  enforced,  that  it  was 
said  not  a  single  conventicle  was  left  in  England. 

These  were  fierce  and  vindictive  measures,  but  at 
the  time  they  were  thought  necessary.  In  1661, 
London  had  been  thrown  into  a  state  of  alarm  by 
disturbances  caused  by  Venner  and  the  Fifth  Mo- 
narchy men.  In  1662,  Phillips  and  Stubbs  were 
executed  for  contumacy  ;  and,  in  1663,  twenty-one 
conspirators  were  executed  in  the  north  of  England. 
The  country  was  suffering  under  a  series  of  calamities. 
Constant  plots,  fomented  by  Presbyterians  against  the 
government,  were  discovered  :  in  1664,  war  broke  out 
between  England  and  Holland,  which  the  Lord  Chan- 
cellor openly  accused  the  Presbyterians  of  encouraging 
by  preaching  schism  and  rebellion.  The  great  Plague, 
surpassing  in  horror  anything  which  had  afflicted  the 

E  e  2 


420        THE  COMPLETION   OF  THE  REFORMATION, 


country  for  centuries,  and  which  in  nine  months  swept 
away  more  than  a  hundred  thousand  human  beings, 
had  begun  in  May,  1665  ;  in  September,  1666,  the 
fire  of  London,  which  laid  in  ruins  the  whole  city, 
and  destroyed  eighty-nine  churches,  broke  out.  The 
fire  was,  by  general  consent,  ascribed  rather  to  design 
than  accident ;  eight  persons,  all  of  them  Levellers, 
and  former  officers  in  Cromwell's  army,  confessed  at 
their  execution  that  there  was  a  plot  to  set  fire  to 
London  on  September  2,  and  on  that  very  day  the 
fire  of  London  began.  "  If  this  was  a  mere  coinci- 
dence, it  is  surely  the  most  remarkable  in  history 

The  king  advocated  toleration  from  a  wish  to  favour 
the  Romanists  ;  of  this  Parliament  was  aware,  and  the 
acts  passed  in  the  early  part  of  his  reign,  although 
ostensibly  directed  against  the  Protestant  dissenters, 
really  aimed  at  the  papists.  The  Romanists  enter- 
tained strong  hopes,  which  the  conversion  of  the  Duke 
of  York,  and  the  indifference  of  the  king,  or  perhaps 
his  decided  attachment  to  Rome  after  his  marriage 
with  the  Infanta  of  Portugal,  fostered,  of  a  return  of 
England  to  the  Roman  faith.  As  early  as  1662  the 
king  had  put  forth  a  Declaration,  based  on  "  that  power 
of  dispensing  which  we  conceive  to  be  inherent  in  us  ;" 
but  when  the  House  of  Commons  protested  against 
this  as  contradicting  the  Act  of  Uniformity,  and  even 
Protestant  Nonconformists,  in  their  hatred  to  Rome, 
objected  to  it,  he  let  it  drop,  but  only  for  a  time.  In 
1665  he  devised  a  plan  of  selling  toleration  to  the 
Nonconformists ;  it  was,  however,  through  the  influ- 
ence of  Clarendon  and  the  bishops,  defeated  in  the 
House  of  Lords  :  the  bishops  in  consequence  incurred 
the  king's  severe  displeasure,  and  from  this  time  Cla- 

'  Southey's  Book  of  the  Church,  p.  522. 


AND  THE  LAST  ACT  OF  UNIFORMITY.  42 1 

rendon's  ascendancy  sensibly  declined,  and  in  1667  he 
was  deposed  ^  Henceforward,  under  the  guidance  of 
the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  the  Court  was  given  up  to 
the  most  shameful  profligacy  and  extravagance ;  Shel- 
don, Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  remonstrated,  and  was 
removed  from  Court ;  the  Duke  of  York  threw  off  all 
disguise,  and  openly  declared  himself  a  convert  to 
Rome.  In  1670,  Charles  made  a  secret  treaty  with 
Louis  XIV.,  King  of  France,  in  which  Louis  agreed 
to  give  him  money  to  enable  him  to  rule  without  a 
Parliament,  Charles  promising  to  join  him  in  his  war 
against  the  Dutch,  and  to  declare  himself  a  Romanist. 
In  1672  the  king,  now  under  the  influence  of  the  Cabal, 
published  his  "  Declaration  of  Indulgence,"  suspend- 
ing all  the  penal  laws  both  against  Protestant  and 
Romanist  dissenters ;  but  whilst  a  certain  number  of 
places  of  worship  were  to  be  set  aside  and  licensed 
for  the  former,  the  Romanists  were  not  required  to 
have  any  licensed  chapels,  but  might  hold  their  ser- 
vices in  their  own  houses. 

The  Declaration  was  received  with  the  greatest 
aversion  throughout  the  country,  for  it  was  evident 
that  a  blow  was  being  struck  against  religion,  and 
that  the  king  was  resolved  to  introduce  Romanism. 
The  hatred  against  the  Puritans  which  had  existed 
at  the  Restoration  had  now  subsided,  and  the  old 
hatred  of  Rome  once  more  revived.  The  bishops 
were  strongly  opposed  to  the  Declaration  ;  Lord  Chan- 
cellor Bridgeman  thought  it  so  objectionable,  that  he 
refused  to  annex  the  seal  to  it ;  he  was  consequently 
dismissed  from  his  office,  which  was  conferred  upon 
Shaftesbury,  through  whom  this  arbitrary  attempt  had 

'  "The  best  of  writers,  the  best  of  patriots,  the  best  of  men,"  Bishop 
Warburton,  no  blind  admirer  of  Clarendon,  calls  him. 


422        THE  COMPLETION  OF  THE  REFORMATION, 


been  made.  The  House  of  Commons  considered  it 
an  infringement  of  the  Constitution,  and  passed  the 
Resolution  :  "  That  penal  Statutes  in  matters  Eccle- 
siastical cannot  be  suspended  except  by  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment ;  that  no  such  power  had  ever  been  claimed  by 
any  of  the  king's  predecessors,  and  therefore  that  the 
late  '  Declaration  of  Indulgence  '  was  contrary  to  law  :" 
and  they  threatened  to  withhold  the  supplies.  The 
king  made  a  stand,  but  signs  of  disunion  began  to 
manifest  themselves  in  the  Cabal.  Of  a  sudden 
Shaftesbury  deserted  the  king,  and  declared  the  De- 
claration to  be  illegal ;  the  king  was  obliged  to  yield, 
and  cancelled  it. 

But  this  was  not  enough.  The  highest  places  in 
the  State  were  held  by  Romanists.  The  Commons 
saw  the  threatened  danger  from  Popery,  and  feeling 
their  strength,  passed,  in  1673,  the  "Test  Act"  (the 
famous  Act,  with  the  Corporation  Act^,  remained  un- 
repealed till  1828)  which  required  all  who  held  offices, 
either  civil  or  military,  to  receive  the  Holy  Commu- 
nion according  to  the  English  Church,  and  to  sub- 
scribe a  declaration  against  Transubstantiation.  The 
Bill  easily  passed  the  House  of  Commons,  but  with 
greater  opposition,  the  king  himself  being  present,  the 
House  of  Lords  ;  and  the  Duke  of  York  was  obliged 
to  resign  his  office  of  Lord  High  Admiral. 

The  act  scarcely  bore  more  hardly  on  the  Roman- 
ists than  upon  the  Puritans  ;  but  the  latter,  who  were 
always  glad  of  any  enactments  against  the  Romanists, 
offered  little  opposition  ;  the  Commons  agreed  to  a  bill 
granting  them  toleration,  but  it  was  rejected  in  the 
House  of  Lords. 

^  The  Corporation  Act  had  been  passed  in  1661,  "for  the  well-govern- 
ing and  regulating  of  corporations." 


AND  THE  LAST  ACT  OF  UNIFORMITY. 


In  1677,  Sheldon,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  died, 
and  was  succeeded  by  Sancroft,  who  perhaps  owed 
his  advancement  not  a  Httle  to  his  exalted  ideas  of 
royalty  and  the  doctrine  of  passive  obedience. 
^  At  a  time  when  the  feeling  of  the  nation  was  in 
a  highly  inflammable  state  ;  when  the  heir-presump- 
tive was  a  Romanist ;  when  his  first  wife  having  died 
in  the  Communion  of  Rome,  he  had  married  another 
member  of  the  same  Church,  the  Princess  Mary  of 
Modena;  when  the  king  himself  was  thought  to  fa- 
vour Rome;  in  1678,  an  impostor  named  Titus  Oates, 
who  had  taken  Holy  Orders  in  the  English  Church, 
but  had  since  turned  successively  Anabaptist,  Cal- 
vinist,  and  Romanist,  and  again  retraced  his  steps, 
alarmed  the  country  with  a  pretended  conspiracy  to 
slay  the  king,  and  put  the  Duke  of  York  on  the  throne, 
which  he  was  to  hold  as  a  fief  of  the  see  of  Rome. 
The  dead  body  of  Sir  Edmondsbury  Godfrey,  the 
justice  of  the  peace  before  whom  Oates  had  sworn 
the  conspiracy,  was  found  in  a  field  near  London. 
Colman,  the  Duke  of  York's  secretary,  in  whose  pos- 
session some  popish  documents  were  found,  and  many 
noble  Romanists,  amongst  whom  was  Lord  Stafford, 
were  accused  of  complicity,  and  executed.  All  the 
gaols  were  full  of  Romanists  ;  a  stringent  test  was  re- 
quired from  members  of  both  Houses  of  Parliament; 
every  member  was  obliged  to  take  an  oath  against 
Popery,  Transubstantiation,  the  worship  of  the  Virgin, 
and  the  Invocation  of  Saints  ;  and  Oates  was  rewarded 
with  a  pension  of  ;^I200  a-year.  A  bill  to  exclude 
the  Duke  of  York  from  the  throne  was  introduced  into 
the  House  of  Commons.  The  whole  country  was 
thrown  into  agitation.  On  one  side  were  the  Non- 
conformists and  a  small  portion  of  the  clergy,  who 


424        THE  COMPLETION   OF  THE  REFORMATION, 


maintained  that  the  country  would  never  be  safe 
under  a  Romanist  king ;  the  other  side  insisted  on 
the  divine  right  of  kings,  that  the  right  of  succession 
was  derived  from  God,  and  could  not  be  set  aside. 
The  names  of  Whigs  and  Tories  were  now  for  the 
first  time  introduced  ^  :  the  former  corresponding  to 
the  Roundheads  of  the  Commonwealth,  applied  to  the 
exclusionists ;  the  latter  to  the  Cavaliers,  applied  to 
the  maintainers  of  the  divine  right.  The  Exclusion 
Bill  passed  the  House  of  Commons  by  seventy-five 
votes ;  but  after  a  long  and  angry  debate,  the  king 
himself  being  present,  it  was  rejected  by  a  large  ma- 
jority in  the  House  of  Lords.  A  reaction  soon  set  in. 
The  conviction  prevailed  that  Gates  was  an  impostor, 
and  Stafford  a  murdered  man.  A  new  Parliament, 
and  again  a  new  Parliament,  was  called ;  the  Whigs 
were  defeated,  and  the  king  had  triumphed.  He  was 
now  at  the  height  of  his  power ;  he  no  longer  tried  to 
conciliate  the  people,  and  he  restored  his  brother,  in 
defiance  of  an  Act  of  Parliament,  to  the  command  of 
the  fleet,  without  requiring  from  him  the  test  which 
the  law  demanded. 

Whatever  Charles  might  have  been  during  his  life, 
— probably  he  always  wavered  between  Infidelity  and 
Romanism,  inclining  to  the  former  in  the  time  of 
health  and  high  spirits,  and  to  the  latter  in  his  more 
serious  hours, — he  avowed  himself  a  Romanist  at  his 
death.  In  his  last  illness,  Sancroft  and  Ken  stood 
by  his  bedside,  but  nothing  could  induce  him  to  re- 
ceive the  Holy  Eucharist  at  their  hands.    To  find 

Of  these  contemptuous  nicknames  the  one  was  of  Scotch,  the  other 
of  Irish  origin.  Tories  was  the  name  apphed  to  the  outlaws  who  infested 
the  bogs  of  Ireland.  Whig,  or  "  sour-milk,"  was  applied  to  the  grave- 
faced  Presbyterians  of  Scotland. 


AND  THE  LAST  ACT  OF  UNIFORMITY. 


a  Roman  priest  at  a  time  when  severe  proclamations 
were  issued  against  Nonconformists,  was  no  easy  mat- 
ter. But  there  happened  to  be  at  Whitehall  a  Bene- 
'dictine  monk,  named  John  Huddleston,  who,  having 
saved  the  king's  life  at  Worcester,  had  ever  since  been 
considered  a  privileged  person  in  the  country,  but 
a  man  who  is  described  as  being  so  illiterate  that  he 
scarcely  knew  what  to  say,  or  how  to  act  on  such  an 
occasion ;  and  at  his  hands  the  king  received  the  last 
Sacraments  of  the  Roman  Church.  He  died  Feb.  6, 
1685,  lamented  indeed,  but  only  for  one  reason,  that 
of  the  succession. 

The  reign  of  Charles  II.  is  considered  the  golden 
era  of  the  English  Church,  and  never  did  the  Church 
boast  of  such  a  noble  array  of  divines  at  one  time. 
But  it  is  a  strange  and  instructive  fact  that,  at  the  very 
time  the  Church  was  at  its  height,  virtue  was  at  its 
lowest  point ;  and  there  is  no  reign  on  which  an 
Englishman  looks  back  with  greater  shame  and  hu- 
miliation than  that  of  Charles  II.  The  profligacy 
of  his  cOurt  is  unsurpassed  in  the  annals  of  English 
history ;  whilst  his  reign  was  full  of  disaster  to  the 
country,  of  the  honour  of  which  he  was  as  reckless  as 
of  his  own.  It  is  not  surprising  that  in  such  a  state 
of  things  the  Church  suffered  from  the  attacks  of 
infidelity  and  atheism  under  the  leadership  of  Hobbes, 
a  man  who,  opposed  though  he  was  to  every  modifica- 
tion of  Christianity,  bore  an  unimpeachable  character, 
widely  at  variance  with  the  immorality  of  the  times. 
Hobbes  had  accompanied  Charles  in  his  exile,  and 
exerted  a  strong  influence  over  him  :  Charles  always 
treated  him  with  great  respect,  and  when  he  became 
king,  he  had  his  portrait  hung  up  in  his  private  room 
at  Whitehall,  and  conferred  a  pension  upon  him.  The 


426     THE  COMPLETION  OF  THE  REFORMATION,  ETC. 


refutation  of  Hobbes'  error  fell  upon  three  Cambridge 
theologians,  Cudworth,  Wilkins,  and  More,  who  be- 
longed to  that  class  of  Latitudinarians  which,  now 
rising  into  repute,  for  a  long  time  exerted  such  a 
powerful  influence  in  the  Church,  and  to  which  is 
mainly  attributed  the  torpor  and  indifference  which 
characterized  the  after-history  of  the  Church  in  the 
eighteenth  century. 

This  school  of  thought  may  be  said  to  take  its 
rise  from  Hales  and  Chillingworth.  Hales  published 
a  tract  on  Schism,  in  which  he  advocated  a  dispensa- 
tion from  all  tests  ;  Laud  disliked  his  views,  but 
allowed  the  tract  to  be  published,  and  made  him  a 
Canon  of  Windsor  in  1639.  Chillingworth,  one  of  the 
most  famous  controversialists  of  the  English  Church, 
was  born  at  Oxford  in  1602,  and  educated  at  Trinity 
College,  of  which  he  became  a  Fellow.  He  was  always 
unsettled  in  his  theological  opinions,  at  one  time  even 
inclining  to  Arianism.  Under  the  influence  of  the 
Jesuit,  Fisher,  he  became  a  Romanist,  and  retired 
to  Douay ;  but,  having  been  persuaded  by  his  god- 
father. Laud,  to  examine  the  principles  of  the  two 
Churches,  he  returned  to  the  English  Church  in  1631  ; 
and  in  1637  he  published  his  famous  book,  "  The 
Religion  of  Protestants  a  safe  way  of  Salvation."  He 
never  rose  to  the  highest  dignities  of  the  Church, 
owing  to  his  scruples  with  regard  to  the  Thirty-nine 
Articles  :  the  highest  dignity  he  enjoyed  was  the  Chan- 
cellorship of  Sarum.  Hales,  Stillingfleet,  Cudworth, 
More,  Wilkins,  Whichcot,  Worthington,  Tillotson,  and 
Burnet,  such  were  some  of  the  principal  latitudinarian 
divines ;  but  even  such  great  names  as  these  pale  into 
insignificance  beneath  the  galaxy  of  more  orthodox 
divines  who  flourished  about  this  time. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


THE  ATTEMPT  TO  UNDO  THE  REFORMATION.  ^JAMES  U. 

JAMES,  as  soon  as  he  was  proclaimed  king,  issued 
a  Declaration,  which  he  broke  as  soon  as  possible, 
of  his  solemn  intention  to  maintain  the  government 
in  Church  and  State  as  established  by  law ;  he  made 
the  same  promise  in  his  speech  at  the  opening  of  Par- 
liament :  at  his  coronation,  he  took  the  usual  oaths  ; 
although  some  of  the  customary  ceremonies,  such  as 
presenting  him  with  a  Bible,  were  omitted,  and  neither 
he  nor  the  queen  received,  as  was  usual,  the  Holy 
Communion  from  the  English  bishops. 

It  was  evident,  at  the  very  commencement  of  his 
reign,  that  the  Church,  as  lately  reformed,  would  enter 
upon  a  struggle  for  its  very  existence.  With  all  the 
stubbornness,  but  without  the  intellect,  of  the  Stuarts, 
James  cherished  a  belief  in  the  divine  right  of  kings, 
and  a  hatred  of  Parliaments ;  and  he  resolved  on  the 
establishment  of  Romanism,  as  the  only  means  of  en- 
suring the  obedience  of  his  people.  It  was  necessary 
for  him  to  call  a  Parliament,  because  it  was  necessary 
to  obtain  money.  Every  kind  of  corruption  is  said  to 
have  been  used  to  make  the  House  of  Commons  sub- 
servient to  the  king  ;  and  this  was  done  so  success- 
fully, that  the  king  himself  said  that  not  more  than 
forty  members  were  returned  otherwise  than  he  could 
have  wished  :  they  at  once  proceeded  to  vote  him 
such  an  immense  revenue  for  Hfe,  as  made  him  inde- 
pendent of  Parliament,  and  supplied  him  with  a  power- 
ful fleet  and  army,  which  he  officered  with  Romanists, 
without  further  trouble.    Thus,  and  by  his  successful 


428       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


suppression  of  a  rebellion  headed  by  the  Duke  of 
Monmouth,  he  so  firmly  established  his  throne  that 
nothing  but  extreme  misgovernment  could  have  shaken 
its  stability.  He  soon,  however,  began  to  court  un- 
popularity. 

On  one  thing  he  had  set  his  heart,  and  that  was 
to  abolish  the  rigorous  laws  which  had  been  passed 
against  Romanists.  The  Test  Act  he  disliked,  not 
only  because  it  excluded  all  Nonconformists  from  civil 
and  military  offices,  but  because  he  looked  upon  it  as 
a  standing  threat  against  himself,  made  with  the  view, 
first  of  removing  him  from  the  admiralty,  and  thus 
preparing  his  exclusion  from  the  throne.  It  soon 
began  to  be  rumoured  that  the  king  was  determined 
to  get  rid  of  the  Test  Act ;  that  he  preferred,  if  possi- 
ble, to  do  this  constitutionally,  if  not,  he  would  repeal 
it  himself. 

But  the  majority  of  the  nation  saw  that  the  safety 
of  the  kingdom  depended  upon  the  Test  Act,  and  in 
that  House  of  Commons  which  he  had  lately  con- 
sidered so  favourable  to  him,  he  suffered  such  a  defeat 
as  might  have  shewn  him  on  what  a  perilous  course 
he  was  entering.  James  dissolved  Parliament,  and  de- 
termined to  rule  as  an  absolute  monarch. 

Parliament  being  silenced,  the  clergy  were  left  alone 
to  defend  religion.  To  prevent  them  from  opposing 
him,  he  sent  circular  letters  to  the  bishops  of  the 
Church,  inhibiting  their  preaching  on  controversial 
subjects,  although  sermons  in  the  defence  of  his  own 
religion  were  allowed.  This  injustice  forced  the  clergy 
to  defend  themselves  by  the  diffusion  of  tracts,  but 
this  only  irritated  the  king  the  more.  He  knew  he 
had  no  right  to  act  as  he  was  acting,  and  to  put  Ro- 
manists into  offices  without  the  consent  of  Parliament, 


THE  ATTEMPT  TO  UNDO  THE  REFORMATION.  429 


SO  he  determined  to  effect  his  object  through  the 
courts  of  law.    He  remodelled  the  bench  by  dismiss- 
ing four  judges  who  refused  to  lend  themselves  to  his 
plans,  and  he  appointed  others,  amongst  them  the  in- 
famous Jefferies,  whom  he  made  Lord  Chancellor, 
from  men  who  were  likely  to  obey  him.  These  judges 
decided  that  "  it  is  a  privilege  inseparably  connected 
with  the  sovereignty  of  the  king  to  dispense  with 
penal  laws,  and  that  according  to  his  own  judgment ;  " 
and  this  principle  James  exercised  with  a  reckless  im- 
patience of  all  decency  and  self-restraint.  Romanists 
were  admitted  into  all  civil  and  military  offices,  and 
to  belong  to  the  national  Church  was  a  positive  dis- 
advantage.   Nearly  the  whole  of  the  inhabitants  of 
the  country,  almost  all  the  property  of  the  country  % 
almost  all  the  political  and  legal  knowledge  in  the 
country,  belonged  to  the  Established  Church.  Yet 
Romanists  began  to  swarm  in  every  department  of 
the  public  service  :  they  were  lord-lieutenants,  deputy- 
lieutenants,   magistrates,  envoys   to   foreign  courts, 
colonels  of  regiments,  governors  of  fortresses.  The 
Lord  President,  the  Lord  Privy  Seal,  the  Lord  Cham- 
berlain, the  Groom  of  the  Stole,  the  First  Lord  of  the 
Treasury,  the  principal  Secretary  of  State,  and  others, 
most  of  whom  had  been  bred  Churchmen,  became,  or 
professed  to  become,  Romanists,  in  order  to  keep  or 
obtain  their  high  places^.    The  laws  which  forbade 
the  presence  of  Romanist  priests,  or  the  open  exer- 
cise of  Romanism,  were  set  at  nought.    A  gorgeous 
chapel  was  opened  in  St.  James's  Palace  for  the  king's 

•  Macaulay,  Hist,  of  England,  ii.  238,  says,  although  probably  with 
exaggeration,  "more  than  forty-nine  fiftieths  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
country,  more  than  forty-nine  fiftieths  of  the  property  of  the  kingdom  .  ,  . 
were  Protestant."  Ibid.,  ii.  239. 


430       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


use.  Carmelites,  Benedictines,  Franciscans,  appeared 
in  their  religious  dress  in  the  streets,  and  the  Jesuits 
established  a  crowded  school  in  the  Savoy  ;  and  to 
overawe  the  capital,  which  shewed  clear  symptoms  of 
discontent  at  these  proceedings,  a  camp  of  thirteen 
thousand  men  was  set  up  at  Hounslow^ 

In  order  to  humble  the  clergy,  by  the  advice  of 
Jefferies,  but  under  the  opposition  of  his  ministers, 
James,  on  his  own  authority,  notwithstanding  two  Acts 
of  Parliament  which  provided  that  no  similar  court 
should  ever  be  established,  revived,  in  1686,  the  High 
Court  of  Commission.  To  that  court  power  was  given 
"  to  take  cognizance  of  all  ecclesiastical  matters."  To 
this  illegal  tribunal  were  subjected,  without  the  right 
of  appeal,  all  colleges  and  schools,  from  the  vice-chan- 
cellor to  the  humblest  usher ;  all  offices  of  the  Church, 
from  the  archbishop  to  the  youngest  curate.  The 
members  of  this  court  were  six  in  number,  Jefferies, 
the  Lord  Chancellor,  being  president.  The  other 
members  were  two  laymen,  Herbert,  who  had  suc- 
ceeded Jefferies  as  Lord  Chief  Justice,  and  the  Earl 
of  Rochester,  second  son  of  the  first  Earl  of  Claren- 
don, and  therefore  brother-in-law  to  the  king,  who, 
much  as  he  objected  to  it,  could  not  bring  himself  to 
sacrifice  so  important  an  office  with  its  large  emolu- 
ments. There  were  also  three  bishops,  Sancroft, 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  who  was  fully  convinced 
of  its  illegality,  and  refused  to  act ;  and  the  two  bi- 
shops who  were  thought  to  be  the  most  obsequious, 
Crewe  of  Durham  (to  whose  credit  it  must  be  men- 
tioned that  he  was  a  munificent  patron  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Oxford),  and  Sprat  of  Rochester,  the  latter 

'  Green,  Hist,  of  the  English  People,  ii.  13. 


THE  ATTEMPT  TO   UNDO  THE  REFORMATION.     43 1 


supposed  to  be  attracted  by  hopes  of  obtaining  the 
vacant  archbishopric  of  York. 

The  first  victim  of  the  court  was  Compton,  Bishop 
of  London,  who  had  already  been  removed  from  the 
deanery  of  the  Chapel  Royal  and  the  Privy  Council, 
for  opposing  the  king  in  the  matter  of  the  Test  Act. 
Sharp,  Rector  of  St.  Giles',  a  man  of  exemplary  cha- 
racter, and  an  able  preacher,  was,  with  much  exag- 
geration, reported  to  the  king  as  having  preached  in 
contempt  of  Rome,  Without  enquiring  whether  the 
report  was  true  or  false,  he  ordered  Compton  to  sus- 
pend him  ;  the  bishop  replied  respectfully  that  it  was 
impossible  for  him  to  condemn  a  man  unheard.  Rea- 
sonable as  the  excuse  was,  Compton  now  became  the 
object  of  the  king's  vengeance.  Sharp  was  forgotten, 
and  the  king  determined  to  prosecute  Compton  for 
contempt  in  his  new  court.  In  vain  Compton  claimed 
his  right  to  be  tried  by  his  metropolitan  and  suffra- 
gans. It  was  evident,  even  to  the  court,  that  Comp- 
ton was  right.  Only  Jefferies  and  Crewe  held  out, 
and  they  proposed  to  suspend  him,  but  they  were  in 
a  minority.  The  king,  full  of  wrath,  determined  to 
carry  his  point ;  so  he  threatened  his  relative,  Roches- 
ter, if  he  did  not  join  in  the  condemnation.  Rochester 
was  weak  enough  to  yield,  and  Compton  was  sen- 
tenced to  suspension  during  the  king's  pleasure. 

The  king  was  now  advancing  rapidly  on  his  down- 
ward course.  He  had  silenced  the  two  Houses  of 
Parliament,  because  they  would  not  be  his  tools ;  he 
had  erected  the  High  Court  of  Commission,  to  sub- 
vert the  religion  of  the  country  ;  and  he  maintained 
a  standing  army,  chiefly  officered  by  Romanists,  as 
a  menace  to  the  people. 

The  king  now  thought  the  time  favourable  for  a 


432       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


project  which  he  had  long  entertained,  so  on  April  4, 
1687,  he  went  beyond  the  most  audacious  of  all  the 
attacks  of  the  Stuarts,  and  on  his  sole  authority  issued 
his  famous  Declaration  of  Indulgence  to  Romanists 
and  dissenters  alike.  In  this  he  had  a  double  pur- 
pose. As  he  had  failed  to  bring  the  Church  or  Tories 
over  to  his  side,  he  thought  to  make  friends  of  the 
Protestant  dissenters ;  and  by  suspending  the  penal 
laws  against  them,  to  remove  also  the  disabilities 
against  the  Romanists,  and  render  them  capable  of 
holding  employment.  In  the  former  of  these  hopes 
he  was  disappointed,  as  the  bulk  of  the  Protestants 
remained  true  to  the  cause  of  freedom,  and  such  men 
as  Baxter,  Howe,  and  Bunyan,  refused  an  indulgence 
which  could  only  be  obtained  by  the  overthrow  of 
the  law.  The  Declaration  set  forth,  "  We  cannot  but 
heartily  wish  that  all  people  of  our  dominion  were 
members  of  the  Catholic  Church,  yet  we  humbly  thank 
Almighty  God  it  is  and  hath  a  long  time  been  our 
constant  sense  and  opinion,  that  conscience  ought  not 
to  be  constrained,  nor  people  forced  in  matters  of 
mere  religion ;  we  therefore,  out  of  our  princely  care 
and  affection  to  all  our  loving  subjects,  have  thought 
fit,  by  virtue  of  our  royal  prerogative,  to  issue  forth 
this  our  Declaration  of  Indulgence,  making  no  doubt 
of  the  concurrence  of  our  two  Houses  of  Parliament, 
when  we  shall  think  it  convenient  for  them  to  meet. 
In  the  first  place,  we  do  declare  that  we  will  protect 
and  maintain  our  archbishops,  bishops,  and  clergy, 
and  all  other  our  subjects  of  the  Church  of  England, 
in  the  free  exercise  of  their  religion  as  by  law  estab- 
lished, and  in  the  quiet  and  full  enjoyment  of  all  their 
possessions,  without  any  molestation  or  disturbance 
whatsoever."    All  recusants  were  to  be  protected  in 


THE  ATTEMPT  TO  UNDO  THE  REFORMATION.  433 


their  religion,  and  the  oaths  of  supremacy  and  alle- 
giance, and  the  several  oaths  and  regulations  required 
in  the  last  reign  for  those  who  were  admitted  to  offices, 
were  to  be  dispensed  with  ;  and  people  might  hold 
what  assemblies  they  pleased  for  religious  worship 
without  disturbance. 

The  next  step  taken  by  James  was  to  drive  the 
clergy  and  the  two  Universities  into  resistance.  The 
king  made  no  secret  of  selecting  for  the  most  lucra- 
tive appointments  in  the  Church  those  who  openly 
professed  themselves  Romanists.  By  virtue  of  the 
dispensing  power,  John  Massey,  a  Fellow  of  Merton, 
who  had  no  other  recommendation  than  of  his  havinof 
turned  Romanist,  was  appointed  Dean  of  Christ  Church. 
The  see  of  Oxford  was  conferred  on  Samuel  Parker, 
an  avowed  sympathiser  with  Rome  ;  the  Master  of 
University  College,  Obadiah  Walker,  was  a  convert 
to  Rome  ;  the  bishopric  of  Chester,  after  the  death 
of  Pearson,  was  bestowed  on  Cartwright,  one  of  the 
chief  abettors  of  the  throne  against  the  Church.  The 
archbishopric  of  York  was  kept  vacant  during  the 
whole  reign  ;  delayed,  probably,  till  the  king  dared 
to  appoint  a  Romanist. 

The  Universities  were  the  only  centres  of  higher 
education  of  the  English  gentry,  and  the  only  train- 
ing-schools of  the  English  clergy,  and  these  the  king 
next  proceeded  to  make  his  enemies.  He  commenced 
with  Cambridge,  by  commanding  that  University  to 
admit  a  Benedictine  monk  to  the  M.A.  degree  with- 
out his  taking  the  usual  oaths.  After  an  attempt  had 
been  made  first  to  dissuade  the  king,  and  then  to  in- 
duce the  monk  to  take  the  oaths,  the  two  Houses  of 
Regents  and  Non-Regents  agreed  that  his  admission 
was  illegal,  and  refused.    The  Vice-Chancellor  was, 

F  f 


434         THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


in  consequence,  ordered  before  Jefferies,  and  deposed ; 
his  successor  was  no  more  amenable,  and  in  his  in- 
augural speech  stated  his  determination  to  support 
the  rights  of  the  Church  and  of  the  University.  But 
this  was  a  small  matter. 

Defeated  at  Cambridge,  the  king  turned  to  Oxford. 
The  revenues  of  Magdalen  were  far  larger  than  those 
of  any  other  similar  institution  in  the  land.  The  Pre- 
sidency of  Magdalen,  which  by  its  statutes  confirmed 
by  Royal  Charter  was  in  the  election  of  the  Fellows, 
being  vacant,  letters  mandatory  from  the  king  ordered 
them  to  elect  one  Anthony  Farmer,  a  man  notorious 
for  every  vice,  with  only  one  thing  to  recommend  him 
to  the  king,  his  having  turned  Romanist,  which  alone 
was  sufficient  to  disqualify  him  from  the  office.  The 
college  sent  a  petition  of  remonstrance  to  the  king, 
stating  that  the  person  named  by  him  was  by  the  sta- 
tutes of  the  college  ineligible ;  the  king  persisted  ;  the 
fellows,  acting  on  their  right,  elected  John  Hough,  one 
of  the  fellows,  and  his  election  was  confirmed  by  the 
Visitor,  the  Bishop  of  Winchester. 

The  fellows  were  summoned  before  the  High  Com- 
mission at  Whitehall  for  disobedience ;  Hough's  elec- 
tion was  declared  void,  and  he  and  the  Vice-President 
and  one  fellow  were  deposed  ;  nothing  more  was  said 
about  Farmer  ;  but  now  another  mandate  was  delivered 
to  the  fellows,  dispensing  with  the  statutes  of  the  col- 
lege, and  ordering  them  to  elect  as  President,  Samuel 
Parker,  Bishop  of  Oxford,  who,  even  if  there  had  been 
a  vacancy,  was  not  eligible. 

The  king  went  himself  to  Oxford,  and  in  vain  tried 
to  compel  the  college  to  obey  him.  Again  the  High 
Commission  was  put  in  motion,  but  this  time  it  sat 
at  Oxford,  and  instituted  a  visitation  of  Magdalen. 


THE  ATTEMPT  TO  UNDO  THE  REFORMATION,  435 


All  the  fellows,  except  two,  were  expelled,  and  ren- 
dered incapable  of  holding  any  Church  preferment ; 
the  Bishop  of  Oxford  was  forcibly  admitted  as  Presi- 
dent ;  the  fellowships  were  filled  up  with  Roman- 
ists ;  and  when  shordy  afterwards  Parker  died,  a  Ro- 
manist, Bonaventure  Giffard,  Bishop  of  Madura,  was 
elected,  and  the  Roman  Mass  was  celebrated  in  the 
college  chapel. 

The  Declaration  of  Indulgence  had  been  before  the 
country  more  than  a  year,  when,  on  May  4,  1688,  the 
following  order  was  put  forth,  that  it  should  be  read 
in  the  churches  :  "  It  is  this  day  ordered  by  his  ma- 
jesty in  council,  that  his  majesty's  late  gracious  Decla- 
ration ...  be  read  at  the  usual  time  of  Divine  Ser- 
vice on  the  twentieth  and  twenty  -  seventh  of  this 
month,  in  all  the  churches  and  chapels  within  the 
cities  of  London  and  Westminster,  and  ten  miles 
thereabout;  and  upon  the  third  and  tenth  of  June 
next,  in  all  the  churches  and  chapels  throughout  the 
kingdom.  And  it  is  hereby  further  ordered,  that  the 
Right  Reverend  the  Bishops  cause  the  said  Declara- 
tion to  be  sent  and  distributed  throughout  their  seve- 
ral and  respective  dioceses,  to  be  read  accordingly." 
Only  a  short  time  was  allowed  for  consideration.  The 
clergy  held  several  meetings  in  London  ;  it  was  evi- 
dent to  them  that  the  king  was  bent  on  subverting  the 
Church,  and  making  the  clergy  his  instruments  for 
the  purpose ;  and  they  determined  not  to  read  the 
Indulgence. 

Sancroft  summoned  a  meeting  at  Lambeth  of  such 
bishops  as  could  arrive  in  London  on  so  short  a  no- 
tice for  May  18.  At  this  meeting  there  were  present : 
Sancroft,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  ;  Compton,  Bishop 
of  London  ;  Lloyd  of  St.  Asaph,  Turner  of  Ely,  Lake 

F  f  2 


43^        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


of  Chichester,  Ken  of  Bath  and  Wells,  White  of  Peter- 
borough, and  Trelawney  of  Bristol ;  besides  these  were 
present,  Tillotson,  Dean  of  Canterbur}',  Stillingfleet, 
Archdeacon  of  London,  Patrick,  Dean  of  Peterborough, 
Sherlock,  Master  of  the  Temple,  and  Tenison,  Vicar 
of  St.  Martin's.  A  petition  of  remonstrance  to  the 
king  was  drawn  up  in  the  handwriting  of  Sancroft, 
and  signed  by  him  and  six  of  the  bishops  present, 
Compton  being  suspended,  and  so  incapacitated  from 
signing  :  other  bishops,  Compton,  Lloyd  of  Norwich, 
Frampton  of  Gloucester,  Ward  of  Salisbury,  INIew  of 
Winchester,  Lampleugh  of  Exeter,  agreed  with  the 
remonstrance  ;  the  sees  of  York  and  Oxford  were  va- 
cant. Only  in  four  churches  in  London  was  the  Indulg- 
ence read*^;  one  of  those  who  obeyed,  Timothy  Hall, 
who  had  nothing  else  to  recommend  him,  was  re- 
warded with  the  bishopric  of  Oxford  ;  even  the  chap- 
lain of  St.  James's  Chapel  refused  to  read  it.  Nor 
was  the  case  different  in  the  country ;  only  a  few  of 
the  clergy  obeyed,  and  even  where  they  did,  the  con- 
gregation shewed  their  displeasure  by  leaving  the 
church.  On  the  second  Sunday  the  order  was  more 
generally  disobeyed  than  on  the  first. 

The  king,  enraged  with  the  petition  of  the  bishops, 
which  he  called  a  "  Standard  of  Rebellion,"  but  at  the 
same  time  intimidated,  would  probably  have  receded 
from  the  false  position  he  had  taken  up ;  but  Jef- 
feries,  his  evil  genius,  was  at  hand  to  counsel  him,  and 
by  his  advice  the  bishops  were  summoned,  on  June  8, 
1688,  before  the  Privy  Council,  and  on  the  evening 
of  the  same  day  (Black  Friday  it  was  called)  were  com- 
mitted to  the  Tower.    This  was,  for  the  king's  in- 

^  One  of  those  who  refused  to  read  was  Samuel  Wesley,  the  father 
of  John  and  Charles,  who  was  then  a  curate  in  London. 


THE  ATTEMPT  TO  UNDO  THE  REFORMATION.  437 

terest,  the  most  disastrous  course  that  he  and  Jef- 
feries  could  have  adopted ;  the  bishops  were  looked 
upon  as  Confessors  for  the  liberties  of  the  Church  and 
the  nation ;  it  was  necessary,  in  order  to  prevent  a 
riot,  that  they  should  be  conveyed  to  the  Tower  by 
water ;  everywhere  they  were  met  with  prayers  for 
their  safety,  and  rejoicings  for  their  courage ;  even 
the  banks  of  the  river  were  crowded  with  people 
kneeling,  and  asking  their  blessing ;  the  very  senti- 
nels at  the  Tower  knelt  for  their  blessing  as  they 
entered  its  gates. 

On  arriving  within  the  Tower,  they  immediately  re- 
paired to  service  in  the  chapel  :  the  words  of  the  se- 
cond lesson  were  such  as  to  give  them  all  the  comfort 
they  needed  :  "  in  all  things  approving  ourselves  as 
the  ministers  of  God,  in  much  patience,  in  afflictions, 
in  distresses,  in  stripes,  in  imprisonments."  They  were 
detained  as  prisoners  one  week.  On  June  15  they 
were  summoned  before  the  King's  Bench.  On  their 
way  thither,  even  greater  demonstrations  of  respect 
were  shewn  than  on  their  way  to  the  Tower  :  thirty 
or  forty  of  the  nobility  accompanied  them,  ready  to 
offer  bail,  if  necessary ;  one  of  the  richest  dissenters 
in  the  city  solicited  the  honour  of  giving  security  for 
them ;  but  bail  was  not  required ;  that  day  fortnight 
was  appointed  for  their  trial,  and  during  the  interval 
they  were  bound  only  by  their  own  recognizances. 
The  trial  took  place  on  June  29.  The  jury  had  been 
packed  :  the  judges  were  mere  tools  of  the  Crown ; 
but  judges  and  jury  were  both  overawed  by  the  in- 
dignation of  the  people  at  large ^.  In  the  early  part 
of  the  evening  the  jury  retired,  and  remained  the 


'  Green,  ii.  24. 


438       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


whole  night  in  deliberation  :  and  at  ten  o'clock  the 
next  morning  the  court  met  again.  The  bishops 
were  acquitted.  The  king  had  retired  to  the  camp 
at  Hounslow,  to  quell  the  mutinous  spirit  of  the  gar- 
rison. The  glad  news  of  the  acquittal  spread  quickly 
throughout  the  city,  and  soon  communicated  itself  to 
Hounslow  :  the  joyful  acclamation  of  the  soldiers,  who 
could  not  repress  their  feelings  even  in  the  presence 
of  their  sovereign,  first  brought  the  unwelcome  tidings 
to  the  ears  of  the  king.  The  shout  told  him  that  he 
stood  alone  in  his  kingdom  :  the  peerage,  the  gentry, 
the  bishops,  the  clergy,  the  universities,  every  lawyer, 
every  trader,  every  farmer,  stood  aloof  from  him  ;  and 
now  his  soldiers  forsook  him  ^ 

But  even  now  the  infatuated  king  could  not  be 
turned  from  his  purpose ;  rage  and  disappointment 
at  his  defeat  had  hardened  his  heart  and  rendered 
him  desperate ;  he  dismissed  the  two  judges  who  had 
favoured  the  cause  of  the  bishops,  and  he  resolved 
to  prosecute  the  bishops  before  the  High  Commission. 
The  commissioners  understood  the  dangerous  crisis 
better  than  the  king  :  they  tried,  however,  one  forlorn 
hope,  and  demanded  of  the  chancellors  and  archdea- 
cons that  within  five  weeks  the  names  of  the  clergy 
who  had  refused  to  read  the  Declaration  should  be 
submitted  to  them.  This  was  the  last  suicidal  act  of 
the  expiring  Commission  :  the  chancellors  and  arch- 
deacons made  common  cause  with  the  bishops,  and 
refused  to  furnish  the  information.  The  Commission 
met  :  only  one  officer  had  sent  in  a  report ;  the  chan- 
cellors and  archdeacons  were  not  even  reprimanded, 
for  a  more  important  matter  engaged  their  attention  ; 


'  Green,  ii.  24. 


THE  ATTEMPT  TO  UNDO  THE  REFORMATION.  439 


Sprat,  Bishop  of  Rochester,  was  unwilling  any  longer 
to  bear  a  part  in  the  prosecution  of  his  brethren,  and 
resigned  his  odious  function.  This  was  the  death- 
blow of  the  Commission ;  the  Commissioners  felt  that 
the  tribunal  must  indeed  be  a  low  one  to  merit  the 
censure  of  such  a  man  as  Sprat,  and  the  court  broke 
up  in  confusion. 

It  was  now  felt  that  the  king  was  incapable  of  go- 
vernment. A  common  wrong  had  united  all  the  dif- 
ferent orders  of  the  community :  Churchmen  and 
Dissenters,  Conservatives  and  Republicans,  high  and 
low,  rich  and  poor,  made  common  cause ;  on  the 
same  days  that  witnessed  the  bishops'  acquittal,  a 
letter  was  written  by  some  of  the  leading  men,  in- 
viting the  Prince  of  Orange  to  undertake  an  expe- 
dition to  the  country.  James's  rule  had  only  been 
endured  so  long,  because  he  was  growing  old,  and 
on  his  death  the  Crown  would  pass  to  his  daughter 
Mary,  who  was  a  Churchwoman,  the  wife  of  the 
Prince  of  Orange.  But  just  before  the  trial  a  son 
was  born  to  James,  who  it  was  felt  would  certainly  be 
brought  up  in  the  religion  of  his  father  and  mother, 
and  thus  the  situation  was  changed.  The  king,  see- 
ing his  danger,  issued  a  Proclamation  summoning 
a  new  Parliament ;  he  professed  his  determination 
to  preserve  inviolate  the  English  Church,  and  to 
exclude  Romanists  from  the  House  of  Commons. 
He  now  appealed  to  the  bishops  for  advice,  in 
partial  obedience  to  whom  he  reluctantly  dissolved 
the  High  Commission  Court ;  he  removed  the  sus- 
pension of  the  Bishop  of  London,  and  reinstated  the 
President  and  Fellows  of  Magdalen.  But  it  was 
too  late. 

On  November  5,  1688,  the  Prince  of  Orange,  with 


440       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


an  army  of  about  14,000  men,  escaped  the  vigilance 
of  the  English  fleet  and  landed  at  Torbay.  The 
flight  of  the  king  to  France  left  the  management  of 
the  kingdom  open  to  William,  who  entered  London 
the  same  day  that  James  left  it. 


CHAPTER  IX. 


COMPREHENSION  AND  TOLERATION.  WILLIAM 

AND  MARY. 

A  CONVENTION  Parliament,  in  which  the  Whigs 
formed  a  majority,  met  January  22,  1689.  The 
House  of  Commons  voted  that  the  king,  "  having  en- 
deavoured to  subvert  the  constitution  of  this  kingdom 
by  breaking  the  original  contract  between  king  and 
people,  and,  by  the  advice  of  Jesuits  and  other  wicked 
persons,  having  violated  the  fundamental  laws,  and 
having  withdrawn  himself  out  of  the  kingdom,  has 
abdicated  the  government,  and  that  the  throne  is 
thereby  vacant."  In  the  Lords,  the  majority  of  whom 
were  Tories,  the  question  was  fiercely  debated ;  some 
(and  with  them  most  of  the  bishops  agreed)  were  of 
opinion  that  a  regency  should  be  appointed  ;  but  ulti- 
mately, by  a  majority  of  only  two,  Sancroft  being  absent 
from  the  debate,  it  was  agreed  that  the  throne  should 
be  settled  on  the  Prince  and  Princess  of  Orange  con- 
jointly, and  the  descendants  of  the  latter. 

The  bishops  and  clergy  were  required  to  take  the 
oath  of  allegiance  to  the  new  sovereigns ;  but  at  that 
time  the  doctrine  of  the  divine  right  of  kings  was  con- 
sidered of  such  paramount  importance,  that  such  a  re- 
quirement, whilst  James  was  still  alive,  was  resented  as 
an  intolerable  injustice,  and  nine  bishops  refused  to 
take  the  oath.  These  were  Sancroft  the  Primate ; 
Lloyd,  Bishop  of  Norwich ;  Turner  of  Ely,  Ken  of 
Bath  and  Wells,  White  of  Peterborough,  Frampton 
of  Gloucester,  Thomas  of  Worcester,  Lake  of  Chi- 
chester, and  Cartwright  of  Chester.    A  short  time  was> 


442        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


given  them  for  consideration  ;  those  who  had  not  taken 
the  oaths  by  August  i,  were  to  be  suspended  for  six 
months,  and  if  they  still  refused,  were  to  be  deprived. 
When  that  day  arrived,  Thomas  and  Lake  had  died, 
Cartwright  had  followed  James  in  his  exile,  but  the 
other  bishops,  hence  called  Non-jurors,  refused,  and 
were  suspended;  and  on  February  i,  1690,  were,  to- 
gether with  about  400  of  the  clergy,  ejected. 

Amongst  the  Non-juring  divines,  besides  the  bishops, 
the  most  celebrated  were  Leslie,  son  of  the  Bishop  of 
Clogher,  Chancellor  of  the  diocese  of  Connor,  who, 
although  marked  out  for  high  Church  preferment,  re- 
mained to  the  end  of  his  life  a  zealous  adherent  of 
the  exiled  family;  Hickes,  Dean  of  Worcester;  Je- 
remy Collier,  the  historian  ;  Thomas  Wagstaffe  ;  Dod- 
well,  Camden  Professor  at  Oxford  ;  John  Kettlewell, 
Author  of  "Measures  of  Christian  Obedience;"  and 
John  Fitzwilliam,  Canon  of  Windsor.  Sherlock,  Mas- 
ter of  the  Temple,  at  first  joined  the  Non-jurors,  but 
afterwards  changed  his  opinions,  and  succeeded  Tillot- 
son  in  the  deanery  of  St.  Paul's. 

Amongst  the  non-juring  laity  must  be  mentioned 
Robert  Nelson,  who,  however,  by  the  advice  of  Ken, 
returned  to  the  established  Church  in  1 709.  One  of 
the  many  noble  traits  in  Nelson's  character  was  that, 
notwithstanding  his  Non-juring  and  Jacobite  views,  he 
always  lived  on  terms  of  intimacy  with  members  of  the 
established  Church.  His  name  appears  amongst  the 
most  distinguished  Churchmen  of  the  day,  as  one  of 
the  earliest  members  of  the  Society  for  Promoting 
Christian  Knowledge  at  its  foundation  in  1699,  not 
unfrequently  as  chairman  at  its  meetings ;  and  he  took 
a  leading  part  in  the  organization  of  the  Society  for 
the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  in  1701. 


COMPREHENSION  AND  TOLERATION.  443 


But  an  unhappy  schism  was  set  up,  a  schism  doubly 
to  be  lamented,  inasmuch  as  it  was  partly  political ; 
for  it  can  scarcely  be  imagined  that  any  Whigs  were 
included  amongst  the  Non-jurors.  Ken,  indeed,  re- 
signed his  bishopric,  and  endeavoured  to  stop  the 
schism ;  so  also  did  Frampton ;  but  Sancroft,  the 
Primate,  delegated  his  archiepiscopal  authority  to 
Lloyd,  Bishop  of  Norwich  ;  other  Non-juring  bishops 
were  consecrated,  in  opposition  to  those  appointed  by 
the  Crown;  thus,  on  November  24,  1694,  Hickes,  the 
deprived  Dean  of  Worcester,  was  consecrated  as  Suf- 
fragan Bishop  of  Thetford,  and  Wagstaffe  Suffragan 
of  Ipswich,  by  Lloyd,  assisted  by  White  and  Turner. 
In  this  manner  a  free  Church  was  set  up,  and  steps 
were  taken  towards  effecting  a  union  with  the  or- 
thodox Eastern  Church ;  and  a  proposal  to  that  effect 
was  made,  although  without  success,  to  the  Patriarch 
of  Alexandria.  After  the  death  of  Wagstaffe,  Hickes, 
with  the  assistance  of  the  Scottish  bishops,  consecrated 
in  1 71 3  Jeremy  Collier,  and  others,  to  the  episcopate; 
but  in  1 718,  the  Non-jurors  split  up  into  a  schism 
amongst  themselves,  each  party  continuing  its  suc- 
cession through  the  Scottish  bishops.  The  schism 
was  for  a  time  healed ;  but  it  broke  out  again,  and 
continued  till  1779,  when,  under  the  uncongenial  at- 
mosphere of  the  Hanoverian  dynasty,  its  numbers 
having  gradually  become  smaller  and  smaller,  it  finally 
died  out ;  Dr.  Gordon,  who  died  in  London  in  No- 
vember of  that  year,  leaving  behind  him  only  two  or 
three  presbyters. 

But  to  return.  When  the  Non-jurors  seceded,  the 
bulk  of  the  clergy  bowed  to  necessity,  and  remained  in 
the  Church  ;  but  none  the  less  was  their  bitterness  ex- 
cited against  this  assertion  of  the  supremacy  of  Par- 


444       THE  .  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


liament  over  the  Church,  and  the  deposition  of  the 
bishops  by  an  act  of  the  legislature. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  reign,  the  two  parties  within 
the  Church  began  to  assume  the  more  definite  character 
of  High  Church  and  Low  Church,  the  latter  of  which 
did  not  comprise  one-tenth  of  the  clergy  ^.  The  Low 
Church  party  again  was  composed  of  two  different 
elements,  the  Puritan  Low  Churchmen,  who  were  of 
an  exclusive  character,  and  stood  aloof  from  all  who 
differed  from  them,  and  the  Latitudinarians,  who  ad- 
vocated comprehension,  and  who  would  make  the 
Church's  forms  broad  enough  to  comprise  all  deno- 
minations of  Christians,  the  hated  Romanist  always 
excepted.  They  disagreed  with  the  Nonconformists, 
who  thought  the  wearing  a  Surplice,  the  sign  of  the 
Cross  in  Baptism,  or  kneeling  at  the  Holy  Commu- 
nion, sinful  :  but  they  did  not  regard  such  forms  as 
necessary ;  they  did  not  hold  that  the  Church  had 
power  to  decree  rites  and  ceremonies ;  they  thought 
the  Church  might  exist  without  episcopacy,  or  a  pre- 
scribed Book  of  Common  Prayer. 

The  new  king — born  a  Presbyterian,  called  to  be 
Defender  of  the  Faith  to  which  he  was  an  alien,  and 
all  his  tastes  were  opposed — finding  that  so  many 
amongst  the  bishops  refused  to  take  the  oath  of  alle- 
giance to  him,  and  that  the  Nonconformists  were 
amongst  his  staunchest  allies,  was  inclined  to  favour 
the  Dissenters  outside  the  Church,  and  the  Low 
Church  and  Latitudinarians  within  its  pale.  Epis- 
copacy was  in  his  mind  connected  with  Toryism,  the 
doctrine  of  passive  obedience,  and  the  divine  right  of 
kings ;  and  on  this  theory  there  was  another  king  of 
England  living ;  so  it  was  from  the  Whigs  and  the 

*  Macaulay's  Hist.,  iii.  74. 


COMPREHENSION  AND  TOLERATION. 


445 


Latitudinarian  section  of  the  clergy  that  he  sought 
for  successors  to  the  non-juring  bishops.  The  first 
bishop  whom  he  appointed  soon  after  his  succession 
was  his  chaplain,  Burnet,  an  extreme  Latitudinarian, 
who,  of  all  the  clergy,  was  the  most  obnoxious  to  the 
bishops,  and  whom  Sancroft,  the  then  Primate,  refused 
to  consecrate''.  Backed  by  the  favour  of  the  king, 
and  the  influence  of  Burnet,  the  Latitudinarian  party 
soon  increased  in  number  and  power and  it  became 
evident  that  a  new  era  was  commencing  in  the  history 
of  the  Church. 

Before  he  was  seated  on  the  throne,  the  king  had 
issued  a  Declaration  of  his  intention  to  promote  an 
agreement  between  the  Church  of  England  and  all 
Protestant  dissenters,  and  to  repeal  the  penal  laws  with 
regard  to  the  latter,  "  provided  those  laws  remain  still 
in  force  by  which  Roman  Catholics  are  shut  out  of 
both  Houses  of  Parliament,  and  out  of  public  em- 
ployments, ecclesiastical,  civil,  and  military."  So  that 
his  views  as  to  toleration  were  exactly  opposite  to 
those  of  his  predecessor.  The  Church,  whilst  avoid- 
ing Scylla,  had  run  into  Charybdis. 

Two  bills  in  favour  of  the  Nonconformists  were, 
without  the  advice  of  Convocation  being  asked,  speed- 
ily introduced  into  Parliament ;  a  Comprehension  Bill 
"  for  the  uniting  of  their  Majesties'  Protestant  sub- 
jects," and  a  Toleration  Bill ;  an  attempt  was  also 
made  to  admit  dissenters  to  a  civil  equality,  by  a  re- 
peal of  the  Test  Act ;  this,  however,  was  at  once  re- 
jected by  the  House  of  Lords.    The  Comprehension 

He  was,  however,  so  inconsistent  as  to  issue  his  commission  for 
Burnet's  consecration  by  other  bishops. 

'  "In  two  years'  time,"  says  Burnet,  "the  king  had  named  fifteen 
bishops,  and  these  were  generally  looked  on  as  the  learnedest,  the  wisest, 
and  the  best  who  were  in  the  Church." 


446       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 

Bill  passed  the  House  of  Lords,  but  the  Commons 
refused  to  discuss  it,  and  advised  the  king  to  follow 
the  ancient  practice  of  the  kingdom,  and  to  summon 
a  Convocation  to  deliberate  on  ecclesiastical  matters. 
The  Toleration  Act,  however,  met  a  different  fate ; 
it  passed  both  Houses  with  slight  opposition,  and 
received  the  royal  assent  on  May  24,  1689.  It  re- 
pealed the  most  rigorous  of  the  penal  laws  against 
dissenters,  but  it  did  not  touch  the  Act  of  Uniformity, 
and  left  the  civil  disabilities  of  dissenters  under  the 
Corporation  and  Test  Act  unaltered.  By  the  To- 
leration Act,  all  persons  dissenting  from  the  Church 
of  England  were,  on  taking  the  oath  of  allegiance  and 
supremacy,  and  subscribing  a  declaration  against  Tran- 
substantiation,  exempted  from  the  penalties  of  attend- 
ing religious  worship  according  to  their  own  forms, 
provided  it  was  not  done  with  closed  doers  ;  Quakers 
being  allowed  to  make  an  affirmation  instead  of  tak- 
ing the  oath.  Dissenting  ministers  were  excused 
from  subscribing  part  of  the  20th  Article,  as  well  as 
the  34th,  35th,  and  36th  Articles.  An  exception  from 
the  benefits  of  the  act  was,  however,  made  in  the  case 
of  Unitarians  and  Romanists,  who  were  soon  sub- 
jected to  additional  penalties.  The  former  were  dis- 
abled from  holding  any  office,  ecclesiastical,  civil,  or 
military  ^ ;  the  latter  were  placed  under  most  severe 
restrictions.  In  1700,  an  act  was  passed  offering 
;^ioo  for  the  discovery  of  any  Romanist  priest  in  the 
exercise  of  his  office,  and  subjecting  him  to  perpetual 
banishment.  By  the  same  act,  Romanists  were  de- 
clared incapable  of  inheriting  or  purchasing  land,  un- 
less they  abjured  their  religion  ;  they  were  also  pro- 


"  9  Will.  III.,  c.  35. 


COMPREHENSION  AND  TOLERATION.  447 


hibited  from  sending  their  children  abroad  to  be 
educated. 

The  king  now,  in  opposition  to  the  opinion  of  Bur- 
net, who  saw  that  a  Convocation  would  be  fatal  to 
his  favourite  scheme  of  Comprehension,  determined 
to  follow  the  advice  of  Tillotson,  who,  though  himself 
a  Latitudinarian,  and  disliking  its  meeting  as  much 
as  Burnet,  saw  its  necessity,  and  advised  the  king  to 
summon  Convocation.  By  Tillotson's  advice,  a  Com- 
mission was  issued  to  ten  bishops  and  twenty  other 
divines,  to  propose,  amongst  other  matters,  alterations 
in  the  Liturgy  and  Canons,  and  for  reforming  the  ec- 
clesiastical courts,  to  be  submitted  to  Convocation. 
The  commissioners — amongst  whom  were  Tillotson 
and  Tenison,  future  Archbishops  of  Canterbury ; 
Sharp,  afterwards  Archbishop  of  York  ;  Beveridge, 
Archdeacon  of  Colchester,  afterwards  Bishop  of  St. 
Asaph  ;  Stillingfleet,  Bishop  of  Worcester  ;  and  Bur- 
net— met  for  the  first  time  in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber 
on  October  3,  1689.  Two  bishops,  Mew  of  Winches- 
ter, and  Sprat  of  Rochester,  quickly  withdrew  ;  as  also 
did  Jane,  Regius  Professor  of  Divinity  at  Oxford,  and 
Aldrich,  Dean  of  Christ  Church.  The  other  com- 
missioners seem  to  have  been  unanimous  in  formu- 
lating a  scheme  for  comprehension,  which  would  have 
been  nothing  short  of  a  thorough  mutilation  of  the 
Prayer- Book  ;  but  as  the  proposed  changes  never  had 
any  authority  or  any  importance,  it  is  not  necessary 
to  give  any  particulars  respecting  them. 

The  two  Houses  of  Convocation  met  again  in  No- 
vember, under  the  conviction  that  the  Church  was  now 
threatened  by  a  danger  from  Latitudinarianism,  equal 
to  that  which  had  threatened  it  from  Romanism  in 
the  days  of  James  II.    Beveridge  preached  the  Latin 


448       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


sermon,  in  which  he  advocated  a  moderate  change, 
but  pointed  out  that  whilst  certain  matters  were  only 
local  and  temporary,  and  could  therefore  be  changed 
to  meet  the  altered  circumstances  of  the  times,  others 
were  primitive  and  fundamental,  and  could  not  be 
altered  without  affecting  the  vitality  of  the  Church. 
The  first  thing  was  to  elect  a  Prolocutor.  The  Court, 
and  those  bishops  who  were  desirous  of  changes, 
wished  Tillotson  to  be  elected  ;  but  Dr.  Jane  was 
elected  by  a  majority  of  two  to  one  over  the  future 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  In  the  customary  Latin 
speech,  he  extolled  the  excellence  of  the  English 
Church,  and  concluded  with  the  significant  words, 
"  Nolumus  leges  Angliae  mutari."  But  it  was  now 
discovered  that  the  Royal  Warrant,  without  which 
Convocation  could  not  proceed  to  business,  was  de- 
ficient, through  the  loss  of  the  Great  Seal,  which 
James,  in  his  flight  from  London,  had  thrown  into 
the  Thames ;  so  Convocation  was  prorogued  till  De- 
cember 4.  The  proper  warrant,  sealed  with  the  Great 
Seal,  was  in  the  meantime  brought  in  due  form,  with 
a  message  from  the  king,  in  which  he  spoke  of  "  his 
interest  for  the  Protestant  religion  in  general,  and  of 
the  Church  of  England  in  particular."  The  Upper 
House  quickly  agreed  in  their  answer,  thanking  the 
king  for  his  message,  and  requested  the  concurrence 
of  the  Lower  House.  The  Lower  House,  however, 
refused  to  consent  to  an  expression  which  identified 
the  English  Church  with  foreign  Protestantism,  and 
claimed  the  right  of  drawing  up  their  own  address  ; 
ultimately,  the  matter  was  patched  up,  to  the  dissatis- 
faction of  the  bishops,  and  an  address  of  thanks  was 
presented  to  the  king,  in  which  the  word  Protestant, 
as  applied  to  the  English  Church,  was  omitted. 


COMPREHENSION  AND  TOLERATION,  449 

The  king,  however,  understood  the  meaning  of  the 
omission,  and  saw  with  anger  that  his  plan  of  compre- 
hension had  failed.  The  Upper  House  pleaded  as 
an  excuse  that  the  Primate,  Sancroft,  was  absent  from 
the  debates  ;  that  Compton,  the  Bishop  of  London,  was 
acting  without  full  authority ;  and  that  there  was  not 
a  sufficient  number  of  bishops  present ;  they  there- 
fore advised  the  king  to  prorogue  Convocation.  It 
was  accordingly  prorogued  for  six  weeks ;  it  was  then, 
through  the  influence  of  Tillotson,  prorogued  again 
and  again,  and  was  not  allowed  to  assemble  for  ten 
years.  "  Thus,"  says  Burnet,  "  seeing  they  were  in 
no  disposition  to  enter  upon  business,  they  were  kept 
from  doing  mischief  for  a  course  of  ten  years,"  But 
in  whatever  manner  it  was  brought  about,  any  escape 
from  the  threatened  mutilation  of  the  Prayer- Book  at 
such  a  time  was  little  short  of  providential.  Had  it 
once  begun,  it  is  impossible  to  say  where  it  would 
have  stopped.  As  yet,  the  schism  made  by  the  se- 
cession of  the  Non-jurors  was  insignificant ;  had  the 
suggestions  of  the  commissioners  for  alterations  in  the 
Liturgy  been  carried  out,  it  is  almost  certain  the 
schism  would  have  been  swollen,  not  only  by  a  large 
majority  of  the  clergy,  but  by  large  congregations  of 
the  laity  also ;  and  thus  a  rent  would  have  been  made 
in  the  Church,  the  consequence  of  which  it  would 
have  been  impossible  to  foresee. 

There  was  a  growing  feeling  amongst  the  bishops 
whom  William  appointed  against  Convocation.  The 
king  selected  Latitudinarian  bishops,  and  the  lay 
patrons  of  livings,  who  were  mostly  Jacobites,  or  at 
any  rate  not  Whigs,  appointed  High  Churchmen  to 
benefices ;  the  result  was  a  severance  between  the 
bishops  and  the  mass  of  the  clergy,  which  tended  to 


450       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


break  the  strength  of  the  Church.  The  appointment 
of  Tillotson  to  the  primacy  in  1691,  in  succession  to 
Sancroft,  was  very  unpopular  with  the  clergy.  He 
was  the  foremost  theologian  of  the  school  of  Chilling- 
worth  and  Hales ;  a  Latitudinarian  as  broad  as  Burnet; 
he  would  dispense  with  all  the  practices  and  formu- 
laries of  the  Church  ;  he  allowed  communicants  to 
receive  the  Holy  Eucharist  sitting;  of  the  Athanasian 
Creed,  he  confessed  that  "  he  wished  we  were  well  rid 
of  it."  His  aversion  to  Convocation  arose  from  his 
having  taken  an  active  part  in  the  Comprehension 
Committee,  so  that  when  he  became  Archbishop  he 
determined  to  govern  the  Church  without  it,  by  means 
of  royal  injunctions. 

Tillotson,  who  was  far  advanced  in  years  when  he 
became  Primate,  died  in  1699,  and  a  better  man  than 
Stillingfleet  could  not  have  been  found  to  succeed 
him ;  but  Stillingfleet  was  too  sound  a  Churchman,  so 
Tenison,  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  who,  like  Tillotson,  was 
a  Latitudinarian,  was  appointed  archbishop. 

Those  ten  years  during  which  it  was  suppressed, 
were  by  no  means  uneventful,  and  an  important  con- 
troversy on  the  subject  of  Convocation  took  place,  in 
which  two  men  destined  to  attain  high  places  in  the 
Church,  Dr.  Wake  and  Francis  Atterbury,  bore  a  con- 
spicuous part. 

The  controversy,  which  was  to  bear  fruit  in  the 
future  history  of  Convocation,  had  its  beginning  in 
a  pamphlet  published  in   1689,  entitled,  "A  Letter 

'  He  was  accused  of  being  an  Arian,  a  Socinian,  a  Deist,  an  Atheist ; 
of  holding  the  account  of  the  Fall  and  the  Book  of  Genesis  as  allegorical, 
and  denying  eternal  punishment.  His  parents  were  said  to  have  been 
Anabaptists  ;  the  parish  registers  were  in  vain  sought  for  his  baptism, 
and  he  was  nicknamed  "undipped  John."    (Macaulay,  iv.  36.) 


COMPREHENSION  AND  TOLERATION.  45 1 


to  a  Convocation  Man,"  in  which  the  writer  contended 
that  Convocation  was  the  only  means  of  remedying 
the  prevalent  immorality  and  infidelity.  Convocation, 
the  letter  said,  had,  by  the  writ  prcEinunientes,  the 
same  right  as  Parliament  to  meet  and  pass  measures, 
and  nothing  was  required  for  their  validity,  except 
the  sanction  of  the  king.  This  letter  was  answered 
amongst  others  by  Dr.  Wake,  in  a  work  called,  "  The 
Authority  of  Christian  Kings  over  their  Ecclesiastical 
Synods,"  in  which  he  argued  that  from  the  time  of 
the  conversion  of  the  Roman  empire  to  Christianity, 
princes  had  always  the  control  over  their  ecclesiastical 
synods ;  that  although  it  had  been  usual  to  summon 
Convocation  with  Parliament,  yet  that  it  never  had 
power  to  make  laws  without  the  king's  licence  ;  that 
its  business  was  only  occasional  ;  and,  as  to  the  evils 
suggested  in  the  "  Letter  to  a  Convocation  Man,"  Con- 
vocation would  be  a  "  remedy  worse  than  the  disease." 
The  chief  antagonist  to  Dr.  Wake  was  Atterbury,  then 
Student  of  Christ  Church,  but  afterwards  Bishop  of 
Rochester,  who  demanded  for  Convocation  the  right 
claimed  in  the  "  Letter  to  a  Convocation  Man,"  of 
meeting  with  Parliament. 

The  clergy  generally  adopted  the  views  of  Atter- 
bury, and  maintained  that,  by  the  law  of  the  land,  it 
was  intended  that  Convocation  should  meet  as  often 
as  Parliament,  and  that  the  Lower  House  of  Convoca- 
tion had,  equally  with  the  Lower  House  of  Parliament, 
its  inherent  and  independent  rights.  The  necessity  of 
the  assertion  of  their  rights  arose  from  the  fact  that, 
since  the  death  of  the  queen  in  1694,  the  king  had  en- 
trusted to  six  bishops,  all  of  them  Latitudinarians,  the 
patronage  of  the  Church  dignities,  and  these  bishops 
always  appointed  men  of  similar  views  with  them- 

G  g  2 


452       THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  REFORMATION  ERA. 


selves,  men  therefore  widely  opposed  to  the  great  ma- 
jority of  the  clergy. 

Under  these  circumstances,  it  was  inevitable  that 
quarrels  should  arise  between  the  two  houses ;  but  as 
the  subsequent  history  of  Convocation  belongs  to  the 
eighteenth  century,  this  must  be  a  matter  for  a  future 
chapter. 


PART  VI. 


ZTbe  Cburcb  of  tbc  proteetant  jera. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

^ITHEN  we  consider  the  various  phases  through 
which  the  Church  had  lately  passed,  the  rapid 
transition  from  the  Romanism  of  James  II.  to  the 
Calvinism  of  William  of  Orange ;  and  then  look 
forward  a  few  years  to  the  accession  of  the  Hano- 
verian dynasty,  and  the  Lutheranism  of  the  first  two 
Georges,  we  may  well  be  thankful  that  there  was  any 
religion  at  all  in  England  during  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. With  the  exception  of  a  short  gleam  of  light 
in  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne,  we  are  now  entering 
on  a  period  of  darkness  in  the  Church's  history.  Yet 
at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  period  of 
peace  and  prosperity,  as  well  to  the  Church  as  to  the 
State,  appeared  to  have  set  in ;  as  the  century  ad- 
vanced, the  prosperity  of  the  State  increased ;  the 
thirty  years  which  succeeded  the  peace  of  Utrecht 
(1713)  were,  says  Mr.  Hallam^  "the  most  prosperous 
season  that  England  has  ever  experienced  ;"  but  to  the 
Church,  whilst  there  never  was  greater  appearance  of 
hope  than  at  the  beginning  of  the  century,  never  was 
fulfilment  of  hope  more  melancholy  as  the  century 
advanced. 

William  died  in  1702,  and  his  successor  Anne,  an 
intellectually  dull  woman  indeed ;  (it  was  said  that  if 

■  Const.  Hist.,  ii.  464. 


454        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


there  was  any  duller  person  in  the  kingdom  it  was  her 
husband,  Prince  George  of  Denmark) ;  untainted,  on 
the  one  hand,  with  the  Latitudinarianism  of  her  pre- 
decessor, or,  on  the  other,  with  the  Romanism  of  her 
father,  was  devoutly  attached  to  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land ;  she  was  also  kindly  and  compassionate  in  her 
private  feelings,  and  liberal  in  her  public  benefactions, 
qualities  which  gained  for  her  the  popular  appellation 
of  the  "good  Queen  Anne."  In  the  new  Parliament, 
at  the  beginning  of  her  reign,  the  decision  of  the  pre- 
vious elections  had  been  reversed,  and  double  the 
number  of  Tories  (that  is,  of  the  professed  friends 
of  the  Church)  had  been  returned  over  that  of  the 
Whigs.  Both  parties  in  the  State  recognised  her 
power,  and  vied  with  each  other  for  her  support ;  each 
denounced  the  other  as  enemies  of  the  Church,  the 
Tories  charging  the  Whigs  with  favouring  Puritanism, 
the  Whigs  retaliating  by  accusing  the  Tories  of  fa- 
vouring Rome  and  the  Pretender  \  Both  Romanist 
and  Low  Church  dissenters  tried  their  strengfth  agfainst 
her  and  failed,  and  the  National  Church  was  willingly 
embraced  by  all  classes  of  the  community. 

But  even  as  early  as  1 7 1 1  a  message  was  sent  by 
the  Queen  to  Convocation,  directing  its  attention  to 
the  growth  of  "  immorality  and  profaneness,"  and  "  the 
relaxation  and  decay  of  the  discipline  of  the  Church  ;" 
and  complaining  that  "  a  due  regard  to  religious  per- 
sons, places,  and  things,  hath  scarce  in  any  age  been 
more  wanting."  As  the  century  proceeded  matters 
grew  worse,  and  in  a  few  years,  whatever  influence  the 
Church  had  possessed  under  Anne,  entirely  disap- 
peared under  the  first  two  Georges,  who  were  not 
only  men  of  alien  faith,  but  of  grossly  immoral  lives ; 
Abbey  and  Overton's  English  Church. 


THE   EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 


455 


who  made  no  secret  of  living  openly  with  their  mis- 
tresses, in  which  the  wife  of  the  second  George,  by 
her  coarse  jokes,  rather  encouraged  her  husband  than 
otherwise. 

A  more  unscrupulous  minister  than  Sir  Robert 
Walpole  never  presided  over  a  great  nation.  In  1712 
he  was  expelled  from  the  House  of  Commons  for  -"a 
high  breach  of  trust  and  notorious  corruption,"  and 
sent  to  the  Tower;  yet  on  the  accession  of  George  I. 
he  was  advanced  to  favour,  and  found  a  patron  in  the 
queen;  in  171 5  he  became  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer and  First  Lord  of  the  Treasury,  and  for  a 
quarter  of  a  century,  with  a  break  of  only  four  years, 
he  ruled  the  destinies  of  England ;  a  jest  which  was 
circulated  during  his  premiership,  that  a  bill  was  to 
be  introduced  into  Parliament  to  expunge  the  word 
"not"  from  the  Commandments,  and  transfer  it  to 
the  Creeds,  describes  only  too  faithfully  the  condition 
of  society. 

Under  such  influences  arose  the  decay  of  religion, 
the  coarseness  of  manners,  and  the  general  ignorance 
which  have  rendered  the  eighteenth  century  a  by- 
word in  the  history  of  the  Church.  Seeker,  Bishop 
of  Oxford  (afterwards  Archbishop  of  Canterbury),  thus, 
in  1 738,  charges  his  candidates  for  Holy  Orders  :  "  You 
cannot  but  see  in  what  a  profane  and  corrupt  age  this 
stewardship  is  committed  to  you  ;  how  grievously  reli- 
gion and  its  ministers  are  hated  and  despised."  Bishop 
Gibson  of  London,  in  1741,  complains  that  the  gan- 
grene had  penetrated  the  middle  classes,  generally  the 
last  to  be  infected  by  immoral  contagion.  Bishop  But- 
ler, in  a  charge  to  the  clergy  of  the  diocese  of  Durham 

*  Burke  says  that  in  his  time  only  one  person  in  a  hundred  could  read. 


456        THE  CHURCH   OF  THE   PROTESTANT  ERA. 


in  1 75 1,  says:  "as  different  ages  have  been  distin- 
guished by  different  sorts  of  particular  errors  and 
vices,  the  deplorable  distinction  of  ours  is  an  avowed 
scorn  of  religion  in  some,  and  a  growing  disregard  of 
it  in  the  generality."  Addison  speaks  of  there  being 
less  appearance  of  religion  in  England  than  in  any 
neighbouring  state  or  country.  The  evil  spread  to 
that  sex  which  generally  shrinks  with  horror  from 
the  dogmas  of  the  free-thinker,  and,  in  1710,  Lady 
Mary  Wortley  Montagu  writes,  that  there  were  "more 
atheists  amongst  the  fine  ladies  than  amongst  the 
lowest  sort  of  rakes."  Montesquieu,  a  Frenchman, 
who  visited  this  country  in  1729,  declared,  although 
evidently  with  much  exaggeration,  that  there  was  no 
religion  in  England,  and  that  the  subject  excited  no- 
thing but  laughter. 

The  Church  is  blamed  for  the  low  state  of  religion 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  but  the  truth  is,  that  the 
State  had  so  paralyzed  its  action  as  to  render  the 
Church  almost  powerless.  The  Church  had  never 
recovered  the  triumph  of  Puritanism,  and  the  ejection 
of  its  8,000  clergy  at  the  time  of  the  Commonwealth. 
The  places  of  those  clergy  had  been  filled  by  Puritans, 
mostly  Presbyterians,  but  also  some  Independents  and 
Baptists.  Of  these,  only  about  800  were  ejected  on 
St.  Bartholomew's  Day,  1662  ;  so  that  the  rest  of  the 
Puritans  still  continued,  although  opposed  to  its  doc- 
trines and  its  ritual,  to  exercise  the  ministrations  of 
the  Church.    Hence  arose  great  irregularities. 

"  If  you  would  have  the  conforming  Puritan  de- 
scribed to  you,"  says  South  ^,  "  what  he  is ;  he  is  one 
who  lives  by  the  altar,  and  turns  his  back  on  it ;  one 


*  Sermon  on  Gal.  ii.  5. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 


457 


who  catches  at  the  preferments  of  the  Church,  but 
hates  its  discipHne  and  orders  ;  one,  in  short,  who 
serves  all  the  interests  of  schism  and  faction  in  the 
Church's  livery.  The  Surplice  sometimes  worn,  but 
oftener  laid  aside ;  the  Holy  Sacraments  indecently 
and  slovenly  administered.  These  and  the  like  vile 
passages  have  made  some  men  schismatics,  and  con- 
firmed others ;  and  in  a  word,  have  made  people  Non- 
conformists to  the  Church  by  their  conforming  to  their 
minister." 

Charles  II.  appointed  many  good  bishops,  and  even 
under  James  II.,  although  he  tampered  with  the  li- 
berties of  the  Church,  on  the  whole  a  satisfactory 
state  of  things  prevailed.  But  in  the  reign  of  Wil- 
liam III.  the  seeds  were  sown  which  were  to  bear  fruit 
throughout  the  eighteenth  century.  The  secession 
of  the  Non-jurors  had  deprived  the  Church  of  much 
learning,  and  of  the  Catholic  spirit  which  had  marked 
the  golden  age  of  its  theology ;  to  the  sees  vacated 
by  the  Non-jurors,  bishops  were  appointed  who  tried 
to  assimilate  the  ritual  and  discipline  of  the  English 
Church  to  the  Protestantism  of  the  Continental  Re- 
formers. Under  those  Latitudinarian  bishops  a  theo- 
logical apathy  and  a  neglect  of  Church  literature  set 
in ;  the  patristic  writings,  which  had  been  held  in 
esteem  for  many  years  after  the  Restoration,  were 
neglected ;  the  Fathers  were  little,  if  at  all,  read ;  and 
when  read,  it  was  only  to  be  subjected  to  disparage- 
ment. Episcopacy  was  abolished  in  Scotland ;  Non- 
conformity was  encouraged  both  in  Scotland  and  Ire- 
land ;  the  "  Regium  Donum,"  an  annual  gift  to  the 
Presbyterians,  which  had  begun  under  Charles  II., 
but  had  been  discontinued  at  the  end  of  his  reign 
and  during  that  of  James,  was  renewed  and  increased 


458       THE  CHURCH   OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


to  the  Nonconformists  in  the  North  of  Ireland  ^  After 
the  death  of  William  III.,  the  influence  of  the  Low- 
Church  party  visibly  decreased;  High  Churchmen 
were  abundant  enough^,  but  the  High  Churchman- 
ship  took  the  form  of  an  ecclesiastical  Toryism,  with 
a  full  persuasion  of  the  exclusive  orthodoxy  of  the 
English  Church,  and  a  repugnance  to  dissent  ^ ;  but 
two  things  more  dissimilar  can  scarcely  be  imagined 
than  the  High  Churchmanship  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, and  of  the  present  day.  The  orthodoxy  of  the 
former  was  attached  to  a  political  more  than  to  a  theo- 
logical creed,  and  was  eminently  Protestant  against 
the  errors  of  Rome  ;  but  it  let  go  the  Catholic  element 
of  the  English  Church,  and  so  it  lost  the  fervour,  the 
depth,  the  reference  to  antiquity,  which  had  formerly 
characterized  it ;  the  High  Churchmanship  of  the  pre- 
sent day  is,  on  the  contrary,  theological,  not  political ; 
it  is  the  revival  in  the  Church  of  those  Caroline  di- 
vines of  whom  it  was  said,  "  Clerus  Anglicanus  stu- 
por mundi "  ('the  English  clergy  are  the  amazement 
of  the  world '),  which  had  died  out  with  the  Non- 
juring  schism. 

The  action  of  the  State  had  so  thoroughly  ham- 
pered the  Church,  that  the  Church  forgot,  and  so 
drifted  away  from,  its  Catholic  moorings.  The  chief 
characteristic  of  the  Church  of  what  we  have  called 
the  Protestant  era  was,  so  to  speak,  to  have  no  cha- 
racteristic at  all ;  everything  was  negative ;  and  this 
negative  character  increased  as  the  century  advanced ; 

'  The  "Regium  Donum"  began  in  1672  at  ^600  ;  under  William  III. 
it  was  raised  to  £\,zoo  ;  in  1723  it  was  augmented  by  George  I.,  in  conse- 
quence of  the  Presbyterians  having  advocated  his  cause;  in  1784  it  was 
raised  to  ^2,200  ;  in  1792  to  ^5,000  ;  in  1863  it  was  ^39,746. 

'  The  names  High  Church  and  Low  Church  first  came  into  use  in 
Queen  Anne's  reign.  «  Abbey  and  Overton,  i.  136. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 


459 


and  when  at  the  end  of  it  a  revival  within  the  Church 
took  place,  although  that  revival  was  in  many  respects 
most  beneficial,  and  could  not  be  charged  with  any 
positive  erroneousness,  yet  the  undogmatic  character  of 
its  teaching,  dwelling  rather  upon  what  people  ought 
not  to  do,  than  on  what  they  ought  to  do,  never  seemed 
to  advance  anything  new ;  and  whilst  it  made  sub- 
jective Faith  the  sole  criterion  of  religion,  it  entirely 
disregarded  the  Apostolic  Order  and  Sacramental 
Grace. 

Amongst  the  excellent  Bishops  whom  it  would  be 
difficult  to  enumerate,  were  men  of  learning,  who  de- 
served well  of  their  own  generation,  and  handed  down 
their  light  to  the  next,  such  as  Wake,  Potter,  Gibson, 
Waterland,  Butler,  Conybeare,  Berkeley,  Louth ;  and 
Wilson  and  Hildesley  in  the  Isle  of  Man.  But  of 
these  the  greater  number  were  not  promoted  for  their 
Churchmanship,  but  because  they  had  been  useful  to 
the  government,  and  it  was  expected  that  they  would 
turn  Latitudinarians.  Wake  and  Gibson  had  greatly 
aided  the  government  by  their  writings ;  Berkeley's 
philosophy  led  to  his  promotion ;  Seeker  had  been  a 
Presbyterian  preacher ;  Butler  a  Dissenter,  known  to 
Clarke;  Wilson  and  Hildesley  owed  their  promotion 
to  the  Earl  of  Derby,  But  previously  to  the  death 
of  the  Pretender  in  1788,  energetic  clergymen  were 
frequently  charged  with  Jacobitism,  and  so  incurred 
the  suspicion  of  government  ^. 

At  the  commencement  of  the  century,  Burnet,  Bishop 
of  Salisbury,  although  the  most  unpopular  amongst  the 
clergy  of  all  the  bishops,  was  unquestionably  the  leading 
bishop  of  the  day.  Whilst  mentioning  Burnet's  faults, 
we  must  not  be  blind  to  his  virtues  ;  for,  if  perhaps  some- 
Church  Quarterly,  April,  1878. 


460        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


what  boisterous  and  devoid  of  tact,  he  was  in  his 
pubhc  and  private  Hfe  learned  and  pious,  a  strong 
opponent  of  the  prevalent  vice  of  pluralities,  and 
both  performed  himself  and  enforced  on  his  clergy 
a  high  amount  of  clerical  work.  His  mother  had 
been  a  Presbyterian,  which  may  account  for  his  re- 
ligious bias ;  for  his  great  book  on  the  Reformation 
he  received  the  thanks  of  both  Houses  of  Parliament ; 
but  throughout  the  work  are  manifested  his  anti-Ca- 
tholic sentiments.  He  would  communicate  with  the 
foreign  Churches  of  Holland  and  Geneva  ;  he  would 
dispense  with  the  Surplice,  the  sign  of  the  cross  in 
Baptism,  and  subscription  to  the  Articles ;  thus  com- 
bining in  his  person  the  views  of  the  Broad  Church 
and  Low  Church  parties  of  the  present  day ;  and  he 
perhaps,  more  than  any  other,  may  be  considered  to 
be  the  author  of  Church  of  England  Protestantism. 

Following  in  Burnet's  wake,  the  bishops  were  the 
most  Protestant  portion  of  the  clergy,  and  had  every 
disposition  to  enter  into  an  alliance  with  the  Non- 
conformists. "  In  the  eyes  of  the  majority  of  the 
bishops,  the  Church  of  England  was  emphatically 
a  Protestant  Church,  and  the  differences  between  the 
Establishment  and  the  chief  Nonconformist  bodies 
were  in  matters  of  comparatively  little  moment'."  A 
satirist  of  the  day  said  of  a  neighbouring  parish,  that 
there  could  scarcely  be  found  "  a  Presbyterian  in  it, 
except  the  bishop  j." 

The  main  body  of  the  clergy  (the  patrons  of  the 
livings  being  generally,  as  we  have  already  seen  ^  Jaco- 
bites and  High  Churchmen)  were  opposed  to  this 
Protestantising  character  of  the  bishops,  as  well  as 
to  the  Act  of  Toleration  and  the  Revolution;  but 
'  Lecky,  Eighteenth  Cent,  i.85.       •>  Freeholder,  No.  22.        See  p. 449- 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 


461 


■we  shall  understand  their  theology  better,  how  it  was 
of  a  political  rather  than  religious  character,  if  we 
view  it  with  regard  to  the  Test  Act.  There  can  be 
no  doubt  that  the  working  of  that  act  must  have  had 
a  most  prejudicial  effect  upon  the  Church,  by  making 
the  Holy  Eucharist  to  be  regarded  (as  it  was  de- 
scribed) a  '■'  picklock  to  a  place,"  when  It  was  received 
by  the  place-hunter  or  the  office-holder,  who  were  fre- 
quently noted  worldlings  or  libertines,  simply  with 
a  view  to  obtaining  or  retaining  office. 

And  yet  this  practice  found  no  stronger  advocates 
than  amongst  the  clergy,  especially  those  of  the  clergy 
who,  at  a  time  when  Toryism  and  High  Churchman- 
ship  were  almost  equivalent,  were  called  High  Church- 
men, and  were  supposed  to  take  the  highest  view  of 
the  Holy  Sacrament.  If  these  were  the  views  of  the 
High  Church  clergy,  what  must  have  been  the  views 
of  the  Lower,  or  what  other  than  a  most  pernicious 
result  could  have  been  effected  by  this  teaching  upon 
the  public  ?  It  even  became  the  custom  for  the  minis- 
ter, before  the  Holy  Communion,  to  desire  the  legal 
communicants  to  divide  themselves  from  those  who 
were  attending  for  the  sake  of  devotion  '.  Swift  was 
himself  one  of  the  most  staunch  advocates  of  the  Com- 
munion Test,  and  yet  he  has  given  us  a  sample  of  its 
working  :  "  I  was  early,"  he  writes,  "  with  the  Secre- 
tary (Bolingbroke),  but  he  was  gone  to  his  devotions, 
and  to  receive  the  Sacrament.  Several  rakes  did  tJie 
same.  1 1  was  not  from  piety,  but  e^nploymcnt,  accord- 
ing to  Act  of  Parliament." 

After  the  State  had  thus  made  the  Church  a  poli- 
tical machine  for  State  purposes,  its  next  step  was  to 
take  away  its  means  of  defence,  by  the  suppression 

'  Lecky,  i.  255. 


462         THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


of  its  Convocation.  To  its  Convocation  the  Enelish 
branch  of  the  Catholic  Church  is  especially  indebted, 
for  to  it  are  to  be  attributed  "  our  Liturgy,  our  Arti- 
cles, our  Canons,  in  truth,  all  the  external  circumstance 
of  our  Church,  and  the  regulation  of  its  internal  ar- 
rangement™." The  model  of  our  Church  Convoca- 
tions we  can  trace  back  to  the  very  earliest  ages,  and 
at  no  previous  time  in  its  history  had  the  Church  been 
deprived  of  its  synodical  action.  The  suppression  of 
Convocation  in  171 7  (of  which  an  account  will  be 
given  in  the  next  chapter) — when  diocesan  confer- 
ences and  ruri-decanal  meetings  had  no  existence,  at 
the  very  time  when  Convocation  was  most  needed, 
when  the  Church  was  agitated  by  the  Non-juring,  the 
Bangorian,  the  Deistical,  and  the  Trinitarian  contro- 
versies,— -was  a  great  calamity.  It  is  true  that  its 
latest  debates  had  been  carried  on  with  too  intempe- 
rate zeal  ;  that  strong  opposition  existed,  and  un- 
seemly contests  had  arisen  between  the  Upper  and 
Lower  Houses  ;  but  surely  the  bishops  might  have 
devised  some  remedy,  might  have  suggested  some 
reformation,  instead  of  advocating  its  total  suppression. 
For  in  what  way  was  it  possible  that  the  affairs  of  the 
Church  could  be  carried  on  during  such  critical  times, 
except  through  its  deliberative  assembly  ?  or  why 
should  the  Established  Church,  simply  because  it  is 
the  Church  of  the  land,  be  deprived  of  the  right,  com- 
mon to  all  dissenting  bodies,  of  meeting  and  managing 
its  own  affairs"  ?"  During  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne 
Convocation  met  regularly,  and  vigilantly  guarded  the 

"  Joyce's  Sacred  Synods,  p.  74. 

°  "  Shall,"  asked  Dr.  Johnson  in  1763,  "the  Presbyterian  Kirk  of  Scot- 
land have  its  General  Assembly,  and  the  Church  of  England  be  denied 
its  Convocation  ? " 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 


orthodoxy  of  the  Church  ;  owing  to  it,  in  18 10,  Whis- 
ton  was  deprived  of  his  professorship  at  Cambridge, 
and  the  Arianism  of  Dr.  Samuel  Clarke  was  made  the 
subject  of  complaint  in  the  Lower  House.  Amongst 
its  latest  Agenda  we  find  many  practical  questions 
discussed,  such  as  the  Church  at  that  time  much 
needed, — the  establishment  of  charity  schools  and  pa- 
rochial libraries,  the  want  of  missions,  and  the  increase 
of  Church  accommodation.  It  was  through  the  ad- 
vice of  Convocation  (which,  during  the  reign  of  Anne, 
worked  well  in  concert  with  the  government  of  the 
day)  that,  in  171 1,  a  grant  of  ;^35o,ooo  was  made  by 
the  House  of  Commons  for  the  erection  of  fifty  new 
churches  in  the  cities  of  London  and  Westminster,  and 
their  suburbs.  By  the  suppression  of  Convocation, 
a  strong  barrier  against  licentiousness  and  the  pesti- 
lential publications  which  swarmed  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  was  thrown  down.  When  we  find  amongst 
the  clergy  such  names  as  Sherlock,  and  Warburton, 
and  Waterland,  and  Butler,  and  Wilson,  and  Berkeley, 
it  cannot  be  doubted  that,  had  they  been  permitted  to 
meet  and  deliberate  in  Convocation,  instead  of  each 
being  obliged  to  act  alone  in  matters  of  such  peculiar 
difficulty,  they  would  have  been  able  to  devise  some 
means  of  stemming  the  irreligion  and  infidelity  of  the 
times  ;  and  instead  of  discountenancing  enthusiasm, 
would  have  solved  amongst  themselves  the  important 
question  how  such  zealous,  even  if  mistaken,  workmen 
as  the  Wesleys  could  be  utilized  to  the  benefit  of  the 
Church.  "The  Church  in  danger"  was  a  frequent 
cry  in  the  eighteenth  century  ;  and  the  danger  was 
real  and  imminent  when  the  Church,  having  first  been 
bound  hand  and  foot,  was  afterwards  gagged  by  the 
State.    The  State  did  its  best  to  destroy  the  Church  ; 


464         THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


thanks  to  its  vitality,  the  Church  weathered  the  storm, 
but  it  was  a  period  of  transition  and  of  peril  also. 

It  is,  then,  to  the  State  primarily  that  the  torpor 
and  deadness  of  the  Church  in  the  eighteenth  century 
is  attributable.  We  must  now  enter  more  into  detail, 
in  order  that  we  may  learn  what  influences  within  the 
Church  affected  its  condition  at  this  period. 

First,  as  to  the  bishops.  Those  were  the  days 
when  the  custom  of  visiting  a  diocese  once  during  his 
episcopate  was  established  by  the  Bishop  of  Win- 
chester ;  of  confirming  but  once  in  his  episcopate  by 
the  Metropolitan  of  York ;  of  never  residing  in  his 
diocese  by  the  Bishop  of  Llandaff°.  Most  of  the 
bishops  were  men  of  aristocratic  connexion ;  and  if 
some  were  men  of  learning  also,  yet  they  were  so 
much  occupied  in  writing  controversial  books  in  de- 
fence of  the  outposts  of  Christianity,  they  so  often 
held,  together  with  their  bishoprics,  other  preferments, 
and  were  so  frequently  absentees,  that  efficient  dioce- 
sans they  were  not. 

The  period  is  marked  by  great  nepotism  on  the  part 
of  the  higher  ecclesiastics,  and  cringing  to  the  Ministers 
of  the  day.  In  the  appointment  of  bishops,  learning 
and  piety  were  secondary  considerations,  and  frequently 
no  consideration  at  all.  Ministers  made  no  scruple  of 
confessing  that  they  bestowed  the  highest  offices  of 
the  Church  on  those  who  were  likely  to  be  their  po- 
litical adherents.  Lord  Shelburne  bestowed  the  see 
of  Llandaff  on  Dr.  Watson,  hoping,  says  the  bishop, 
"  I  was  a  warm  and  useful  partisan  ;  and  he  told  the 
Duke  of  Grafton  he  hoped  I  might  occasionally  write 
a  pamphlet  for  the  administration  p.    Queen  Caroline, 

"  Quarterly  Review,  cxiv.  543. 
p  Anecdotes  of  the  life  of  R.  Watson,  i.  157. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 


who,  during  the  reign  of  George  II.  until  her  death, 
was  the  great  dispenser  of  ecclesiastical  patronage, 
made  a  favourable  exception  in  the  case  of  good 
Bishop  Wilson,  of  Sodor  and  Man,  whom  she  highly- 
esteemed,  and  constantly  pressed  to  accept  an  English 
bishopric.  "  One  day,  as  he  was  approaching  the 
queen  to  pay  his  respects  to  her,  she  turned  round 
to  several  bishops  who  were  then  at  levee,  and  said, 
*  See  here,  my  lords,  is  a  bishop  who  does  not  come 
for  translation  °.' "  The  following  letter,  written  in 
1 79 1  by  the  Bishop  of  Lichfield  and  Coventry,  brother 
of  Earl  Cornwallis,  to  Pitt,  will  give  a  specimen  of  the 
manner  in  which  bishoprics  were  negotiated  :  "  After 
the  various  instances  of  neglect  and  contempt  which 
Lord  Cornwallis  and  I  have  experienced,  not  only  in 
violation  of  repeated  assurances,  but  of  the  strongest 
ties,  it  is  impossible  I  should  not  feel  the  late  disap- 
pointment very  deeply.  With  respect  to  the  proposal 
concerning  Salisbury,  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying 
that  the  see  of  Salisbury  cannot  be  in  any  respect  an 
object  to  me.  The  only  arrangement  which  promises 
an  accommodation  in  my  favor,  is  the  promotion  of  the 
Bishop  of  Lincoln  to  Salisbury,  which  would  enable 
you  to  confer  the  deanery  of  St.  Paul's  upon  me." 

Next,  as  to  the  two  lower  orders  of  clergy.  We 
learn  that  during  Queen  Anne's  reign  they  were 
zealous  in  their  work  p,  although  Burnet  dates  the  com- 
mencement of  the  decline  before  the  end  of  that  reign. 
Writing  in  1713,  he  says:  "I  must  own  the  main 
body  of  our  clergy  has  always  appeared  dead  and 
lifeless  to  me,  and  instead  of  animating  one  another, 
they  seem  to  lay  one  another  to  sleep.  ...  I  have  ob- 

Stowell's  Life  of  Wilson. 
f  Defence  of  the  Clergy  and  Church  of  England, 

H  h 


466        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 

served  the  clergy  in  all  places  through  which  I  have 
travelled,  Papists,  Lutherans,  Calvinists,  and  dis- 
senters ;  but  of  all,  our  clergy  is  much  the  most  remiss 
in  their  services  in  public,  and  least  serious  in  their 
lives;"  and  he  speaks  of  the  lamentable  ignorance  of 
the  clergy,  which  rendered  the  "  Ember-weeks  the 
burden  of  his  life."  But  with  all  their  faults,  says 
Lord  Mahon,  "  the  lives  of  the  clergy  were,  as  a  rule, 
pure."  On  one  occasion,  when  a  Presbyterian  minister 
was  inveighing  in  too  strong  language  against  the 
clergy.  Dr.  Johnson  exclaimed,  "Sir,  you  know  no 
more  of  our  Church  than  a  Hottentot 

But  it  is  evident  the  social  position  of  the  clergy  in 
the  eighteenth  century  was  very  different  from  what 
it  had  been  before  the  Reformation,  when  the  clergy 
were  the  most  important  body  in  the  State,  and  all  the 
chief  offices  were  held  by  them.  The  abolition  of  the 
monasteries  had  lessened  the  influence  of  the  Church, 
by  the  removal  of  the  abbots  from  the  House  of 
Lords ;  and  the  appropriation  by  the  Crown  of  so 
large  a  part  of  its  property,  had  left  its  revenue  utterly 
insufficient  for  its  requirements.  As  early  as  1597, 
Hooker  writes  in  his  Ecclesiastical  Polity,  "  All  that 
we  have  to  sustain  our  miserable  life  is  but  a  remnant 
of  God's  own  treasure,  so  far  already  diminished  and 
clipped,  that  if  there  were  any  sense  of  common  hu- 
manity left  in  this  hard-hearted  world,  the  impoverished 
state  of  the  clergy  would,  at  length  of  very  commise- 
ration be  spared.  The  mean  gentleman,  that  hath 
but  ^100  to  live  on,  would  not  be  hasty  to  change 
his  worldly  estate  and  condition  with  many  of  those  so 
over-abounding  prelates  ;  a  common  artizan,  or  trades- 


1  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 


467 


man  of  the  city,  with  ordinary  pastors  of  the  Church." 
Fifty  years  later,  the  average  annual  income  from 
Church  preferments  was,  according  to  the  highest 
value,  ^60  a-year.  People  would  not  send  their  sons 
to  the  Universities,  because  it  was  impossible  to  get 
a  decent  maintenance  from  the  Church.  The  clergy, 
says  a  writer  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
"  are  accounted  by  many  as  the  dross  and  refuse  of  the 
nation.  Men  think  it  a  stain  to  their  blood  to  place 
their  sons  in  that  function,  and  women  are  ashamed  to 
marry  with  any  of  them 

Burnet  tells  us  hundreds  of  cures  were  worth  only 
jC20,  thousands  only  ^50  a-year,  and  Swift  sayS  there 
were  at  least  ten  bishoprics  the  income  of  which  did 
not  exceed  ^600.  Archbishop  Tenison  wrote  to 
Queen  Anne  that  curates  were  often  chosen,  especially 
by  the  lay-impropriators,  at  the  lowest  rates,  often  ^1^5 
or  £6  a-year,  and  were  obliged  to  wander  about  from 
parish  to  parish,  barely  earning  a  precarious  livelihood.* 
Stackhouse,  the  well-known  author  of  the  "  History  of 
the  Bible,"  himself  a  clergyman,  in  his  valuable  book, 
the  "  Miseries  and  great  Hardships  of  the  Inferior 
Clergy  in  and  about  London,"  draws  a  sad  picture  of 
the  "  inferior  clergy,"  and  says  they  were  "  objects  of 
extreme  wretchedness."  Their  salary  was  frequently 
nearer  £20  than  ;^5o  ;  less  than  the  sexton's,  and  not 
so  punctually  paid The  common  fee  for  a  sermon 
was  a  shilling  and  a  dinner ;  for  reading  prayers,  two 
pence  and  a  cup  of  coffee.    They  lived  in  garrets. 

'  Eachard,  Contempt  of  the  Clergy. 

•  Adam  Smith  says,  in  his  Wealth  of  Nations,  in  1776,  that  ^40  a-year, 
the  pay  of  journeymen  shoemakers  in  London,  is  considered  very  good 
pay  for  a  curate ;  whilst  there  were  many  who  received  less  than  £20, 
a  sum  less  than  is  earned  by  industrious  workmen  of  all  kinds  in  the 
metropolis. 

H  h  2 


468        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 

appearing  in  the  streets  in  tattered  cassocks.  If  by 
chance  they  were  invited  to  dine  with  their  rectors, 
the  latter  "  made  jests  upon  their  poverty,"  "  turning 
them  among  the  herd  of  their  servants  into  the  kit- 
chen till  dinner  comes,  and  then  shewing  them  what 
a  mighty  favour  it  is  that  they  are  permitted  to  sit 
down  at  the  lower  end  of  the  table  amongst  their 
betters." 

There  were  indeed  some  rich  prizes,  and  there  were 
some  of  the  clergy  well-fitted  by  their  abilities  and 
learning  to  hold  the  highest  position  in  the  Church  ; 
well  able  to  command  respect  in  (as  the  English  Court 
under  the  first  two  Georges  was)  the  most  dissolute 
Court  in  Europe ;  or  to  maintain  the  cause  of  Chris- 
tianity against  sceptics  and  infidels.  So  there  were, 
it  would  appear,  two  distinct  classes  amongst  the 
clergy  :  the  one,  men  frequently  of  learning  and  high 
family  connection,  and  courted  by  the  aristocracy, — 
these  were  mostly  to  be  found  at  the  Universities, 
at  the  great  cathedrals,  or  in  the  capital ' ;  the  other, 
pressed  down  by  poverty,  regarded  as  a  plebeian 
class,  if  not  without  education,  yet  without  learning. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  the  social  position,  and  the 
influence  of  the  clergy  of  the  eighteenth  century,  was 
very  different  to  what  it  is  now ;  perhaps  the  descrip- 
tion of  Dean  Swift,  who  died  in  1745,  at  the  age  of  77, 
may  not  be  out  of  place  :  "He  is  usually  the  son  of 
some  ordinary  tradesman  or  middling  farmer.  His 
learning  is  much  of  a  size  with  his  birth  and  educa- 
tion, no  more  of  either  than  what  a  hungry  servitor 
can  be  expected  to  bring  with  him  from  his  college. 
He  liveth  like  an  honest,  plain  farmer,  and  his  wife  is 
dressed  little  better  than  Goody.    He  is  sometimes 

'  Macaulay,  i.  332. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 


469 


graciously  invited  by  the  squire,  where  he  sitteth  at 
humble  distance."  Sydney  Smith,  the  author  of  the 
well-known  description  of  a  curate,  draws  a  humorous 
picture  of  the  curate  of  the  eighteenth  century  ;  "  the 
poor  working-man  of  God,  a  learned  man  in  a  hovel, 
with  sermons  and  saucepans,  lexicons  and  bacon,  He- 
brew books  and  ragged  children ;  good  and  patient, 
a  comforter  and  a  teacher,  the  first  and  purest  pauper 
in  the  hamlet ;  yet  shewing  that  in  the  midst  of  worldly 
misery  he  has  the  heart  of  a  gentleman,  and  the  kind- 
ness of  a  pastor 

One  evil  consequence  of  the  inadequate  incomes  of 
the  clergy  was  the  prevalence  of  pluralities,  which  in- 
volved also  non-residence.  It  was  a  common  com- 
plaint that  the  clergy  heaped  together  as  many  bene- 
fices as  they  could,  leaving  the  greater  part  of  the  work 
to  be  done  by  some  half- starved  curate,  whilst  they 
themselves  performed  the  smallest  possible  amount 
compatible  with  law.  Many  of  the  clergy  never  went 
near  their  parishes  from  Sunday  to  Sunday ;  some 
had  to  serve  two  churches  on  the  same  afternoon,  and 
after  finishing  the  service  at  one  church,  were  obliged 
to  gallop  off  as  quickly  as  possible  to  take  the  duty  in 
a  neighbouring  parish.  If  a  clergyman  lived  on  his 
glebe,  he  often  lived  as  an  ecclesiastical  squire ;  if 
called  upon  for  some  extra  duty,  he  would  hurry 
through  the  burial  or  marriage -service,  vested  in  a 
Surplice  hurriedly  thrown  over  the  hunting-coat  and 

"  Whitfield,  however,  gives  a  less  satisfactory  account  of  the  clergy 
of  his  time.  He  says  that  as  a  body  they  made  no  scruple  of  frequenting 
horse-races  and  taverns,  although  they  went  disguised,  by  which  he 
means  without  the  gowns  and  cassocks,  which  were  then  the  ordinary 
dress  of  the  clergy.  Cowper  thus  speaks  of  them, — 
"  Except  a  few  with  Eli's  spirit  blest, 
Hophni  and  Phinehas  may  describe  the  rest." 


4/0        THE   CHURCH   OF  THE   PROTESTANT  ERA. 


top-boots " ;  the  plan  most  in  vogue,  however,  was  to 
reside  out  of  reach  of  his  flock ;  cases  are  cited  where 
clergymen  had  not  visited  their  parishes  for  years,  and 
one  case  where  there  had  not  been  a  resident  clergy- 
man for  twelve  years. 

Queen  Anne,  when,  in  1704,  she  gave  up  the  first- 
fruits  and  tenths,  amounting  to  about  ^17,000  a-year, 
and  appropriated  the  sum  to  the  augmentation  of  small 
livings,  performed  a  noble  act  of  retribution  to  the 
Church ;  but  as  this  revenue  had  been  anticipated  by 
various  grants  for  lives  and  years,  it  was  not  for  many 
years  available  for  the  intended  purpose;  in  1720  only 
three  hundred  livings  had  been  benefited  by  it  ^ ;  until 
1728  an  income  of  ;^50  a-year  was  the  limit  of  livings 
it  relieved  ;  and  as  lately  as  1802  there  were  still  5,555 
livings  with  only  ^50  a-year''. 

Almost  all  the  clergy  at  that  time  were  University 
men ;  but  it  would  seem  that  no  great  amount  of  learn- 
ing was  necessary  to  procure  a  University  degree.  A 
well-known  writer  ^  who  took  his  degree  at  Oxford  in 
1753,  thus  describes  the  process.  Every  candidate 
after  four  years  was  required  to  be  examined  by  three 
Masters  of  Arts  of  his  own  choosing,  the  examination 
to  take  place  in  one  of  the  schools  betwen  9  and  1 1  a.m.  ; 
and  it  was  considered  a  piece  of  good  management  to 
procure  three  pleasant,  good-tempered,  young  Masters 
of  Arts,  and  to  ply  them  well  with  wine  previous  to 
the  examination.    A  frequent  subject  in  the  exami- 

*  Crabbe,  in  his  "  Village,"  describes  the  parish  priest  as  a  keen  sports- 
man, an  eager  follower  of  hounds,  a  good  shot,  and  a  skilful  player  of 
whist ;  who  gave — 

"To  fields  the  morning,  and  to  feasts  the  night." 

*  Chamberlayne,  p.  202.  ^  Quarterly  Review,  ccxlvii.  226. 
'  Dr.Vicesimus  Knox,  Essay  77. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 


47^ 


nation  between  examiners  and  examinee  was  the  last 
drinking-bout,  or  the  pedigree  of  horses  ;  and  to  while 
away  the  time  till  the  hand  pointed  to  eleven,  a  news- 
paper or  a  novel  was  read ;  when  the  expected  hour 
arrived  the  parties  descended,  and  the  much -desired 
"  Testamur"  was  signed  by  the  three  Masters. 

The  state  of  the  Universities  was  far  from  satis- 
factory. Of  Oxford,  Gibbon  says  that  the  fourteen 
most  unprofitable  months  of  his  life  he  spent  at 
Magdalen  College  ;  that  he  was  never  called  upon 
even  to  attend  a  lecture,  and  that  the  undergraduates 
and  tutors  of  the  same  college  lived  almost  as  entire 
strangers  to  each  other.  Of  Cambridge,  Wilberforce 
tells  us  :  "I  was  introduced  on  the  first  night  of  my 
arrival  to  as  licentious  a  set  of  men  as  can  well  be 
conceived.  They  drank  hard,  and  their  conversation 
was  even  worse  than  their  lives,  .  .  .  often,  indeed,  I 
was  horror-struck  at  their  conduct,  and  after  the  first 
year  I  shook  off  my  connexion  with  them." 

The  most  degraded  set  of  men  of  the  eighteenth 
century  were  those  known  as  the  Fleet  clergy.  Them- 
selves imprisoned  for  debt,  at  a  time  when  a  valid 
marriage  was  constituted  simply  by  consent  of  the 
persons  about  to  be  married,  without  licence  or  regis- 
tration, they  were  allowed  to  perform  marriages  in 
pnblic-houses  or  houses  of  ill-fame  near  the  Fleet 
prison,  for  which  purpose  they  were  often  kept  in  the 
pay  of  the  taverns  of  the  neighbourhood.  Young  men 
of  noble  families  were  forcibly  dragged  into  these 
houses  and  married  to  women  of  bad  character  ;  inno- 
cent young  girls  from  the  country  became  the  dupes 
of  gamblers  and  led-captains,  who  haunted  the  fashion- 
able assemblies  under  disguise,  and  only  awoke  to 
their  shame  to  find  themselves  bound  for  life  to  some 


472         THE   CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


ruined  spendthrift.  There  was,  it  is  true,  a  law  by 
which  the  solemnizers  of  a  marriasfe  without  a  Hcence 
were  subjected  to  a  fine  of  ^loo;  but  the  fine  was 
easily  evaded ;  their  dupes  were  only  too  glad  to  con- 
ceal their  shame ;  or  the  profits  arising  from  the  busi- 
ness were  so  lucrative,  that  the  delinquent  clergyman 
was  easily  able  to  pay  the  fine  and  pocket  the  surplus, 
and  thus  to  set  the  law  at  defiance.  When  we  read 
of  one  man  realizing  ^57  from  fees  in  one  month; 
of  another  marrying  one  hundred  and  seventy-three 
couples  in  one  day,  whilst  close  on  three  thousand 
marriages  took  place  in  four  months,  or  at  the  ratio 
of  8,000  per  annum'';  it  is  easy  to  understand  how, 
even  if  they  were  brought  to  justice,  the  trade  left 
a  sufficient  margin  after  the  fine  was  paid. 

Nor  were  there  wanting  persons  to  perform  a  simi- 
lar office  in  the  more  fashionable  parts  of  the  town. 
One  of  these,  Keith,  was  so  overworked  that  he  was 
obliged  to  keep  a  curate ;  he  advertised  his  trade 
openly  in  the  papers  ;  in  one  year  three  thousand 
couples  were  married  in  his  chapel  at  Mayfair,  and 
so  great  was  the  profit  accruing  to  him,  that  his  in- 
come is  said  to  have  equalled  that  of  bishops.  On 
being  told  on  one  occasion  that  there  was  a  scheme 
on  foot  to  stop  his  lucrative  traffic,  Keith  declared 
that  he  would  still  be  avenged  of  the  bishops, — that 
he  would  buy  a  piece  of  ground,  and  outbury  them 

The  practice  of  clandestine  marriages  was  at  length 
stopped  in  1753  by  the  Marriage  Act  of  Lord  Hard- 
wicke,  which  enacted  that  all  marriages,  except  under 
licence  from  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  should  be 
solemnized  in  the  parish  church,  after  banns  published 
on  three  successive  Sundays ;  whilst  no  marriages,  but 

»  Andrewes'  Eighteenth  Century,  p.  48.  ''  Mahon,  iv.  38. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 


473 


those  of  Quakers  and  Jews,  should  be  solemnized, 
except  by  clergymen  ordained  according  to  the  Eng- 
lish Ordinal. 

We  must  now  enquire  into  the  state  of  the  parishes 
and  the  religious  observances  of  the  period. 

One  of  the  great  reproaches  against  the  Church 
of  the  eighteenth  century  was  the  want  of  adequate 
church  accommodation.  A  numerous  class  of  miners 
and  manufacturers  had  sprung  up,  and  yet  the  Church 
made  little  or  no  effort  to  keep  pace  with  the  national 
growth.  Eighty-nine  churches  had  been  destroyed 
by  the  great  fire  of  London,  thirty-five  of  which  were 
never  rebuilt,  their  sites  only  being  denoted  to  this 
day  by  their  burial-grounds,  and  in  some  cases  by 
a  stone  tablet,  on  which  is  inscribed  the  name  of  the 
church,  and  of  the  saint  to  whom  it  was  consecrated. 
Burnet  says  there  were  in  his  time,  in  London  and 
the  suburbs,  two  hundred  thousand  persons  more  than 
could  find  church  accommodation.  Convocation,  as 
we  have  before  seen  had,  through  its  Prolocutor,  At- 
terbury,  warmly  advocated  the  building  of  additional 
churches  ;  and  in  the  new  House  of  Commons  of 
1 710,  which  was  elected  after  the  trial  of  Dr.  Sachev- 
erell  ^  a  large  majority  of  which  were  Tories,  an 
address  to  the  queen  was  voted  on  the  subject,  to 
the  effect  that  in  the  opinion  of  the  House  the  want 
of  churches  greatly  contributed  to  the  misery,  and 
schism,  and  irreligion  of  the  age.  A  sum  of  ^350,000, 
to  be  raised  by  the  duty  of  one  shilling  on  every 
chaldron  of  coals  unloaded  in  the  port  of  London 
for  three  years,  was  devoted  to  the  building  of  fifty 
new  churches.  During  Anne's  reign,  and  until  the 
suppression  of  Convocation,  the  work  made  consid- 

'  p.  463.  See  following  chapter. 


474        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


erable  progress ;  unfortunately,  Convocation,  which 
would  have  been  of  the  greatest  service  to  see  that 
the  work  was  properly  carried  out,  was  soon  after- 
wards suppressed.  Through  mismanagement,  the  few 
churches  which  were  built  were  built  very  extrava- 
gantly, and  being  under  no  proper  supervision,  the 
fund  was  miserably  squandered  ;  so  that,  instead  of 
fifty,  only  eleven  churches  were  the  result.  Thus, 
by  the  end  of  the  century,  the  Church  found  itself 
surrounded  with  a  swarming  population,  and  with- 
out any  adequate  machinery  for  coping  with  the  pre- 
vailing mass  of  ignorance  and  sin. 

To  the  want  of  church  accommodation  must  be 
added  the  baldness  and  coldness  of  the  church  ser- 
vices. On  the  one  hand,  the  fear  of  Romanism,  which 
the  days  of  James  II.  had  recalled,  brought  suspicion 
of  everything  that  was  ornate  in  the  matter  of  ritual, 
and  even  of  the  decent  observance  of  the  highest  fasts 
and  festivals  of  the  Church.  Bishop  Butler  was  ac- 
cused of  Romanism  simply  because  he  had  a  cross  in 
his  private  chapel.  In  1777,  Archbishop  Cornwallis^ 
of  Canterbury,  was  met  with  "  No  Popery"  cries,  be- 
cause, aided  by  Bishop  Porteus, — then  of  Chester,  and 

'  The  wife  of  Archbishop  Cornwallis,  who  had  been  raised  in  1749 
from  the  see  of  Lichfield  and  Coventry  to  the  primacy,  seems  to  have 
created  great  scandal  by  her  balls  and  splendid  establishment.  The 
Countess  of  Huntingdon,  whom  Mrs.  Cornwallis  had  called  a  hypo- 
crite, complained  of  the  archiepiscopal  splendour  to  George  III., 
which  called  forth  a  letter  of  remonstrance  from  the  king  to  the  arch- 
bishop :  "  My  good  Lord  Primate  ;  I  could  not  delay  giving  you  the 
mortification  of  the  grief  and  concern  with  which  my  breast  was  af- 
flicted at  receiving  authentic  information  that  routs  had  made  their 
way  into  your  palace.  At  the  same  time,  I  must  signify  to  you  my  sen- 
timents on  this  subject,  which  hold  those  levities  and  vain  dissipations 
as  utterly  inexpedient,  if  not  unlawful,  to  pass  in  a  residence  for  many 
centuries  devoted  to  divine  studies,  religious  retirement,  and  the  exten- 
sive exercise  of  chanty  and  benevolence,"  &c. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY, 


475 


afterwards  of  London, — he  had  advocated  an  observ- 
ance of  Good  Friday,  which  at  that  time  had  almost 
become  obsolete.  His  "arrogance"  in  causing  the 
shops  to  be  shut  on  that  day,  it  was  said,  would  soon 
be  followed  by  "  the  elevation  of  the  Host  and  Cru- 
cifix to  prostrate  crowds  in  dirty  streets  V  From 
this  same  fear  arose  that  neglect  of  ritual  which,  in 
Elizabeth  and  Charles  the  Second's  time,  had  been 
regarded  as  the  Church's  heritage  ;  and,  as  a  further 
consequence,  that  neglect  in  the  fabric  and  the  out- 
ward circumstances  of  the  Church,  and  the  coldness 
in  its  services,  which  prevailed  through  the  eighteenth 
century. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  hatred  of  Puritanism,  which 
had  been  engendered  by  the  Commonwealth,  led  to 
a  suspicion  of  everything  like  fervour  or  enthusiasm. 
From  one  or  the  other  of  these  causes  arose  a  want 
of  elasticity,  and  the  prevalent  stagnation  of  the  times  ; 
the  public  services  neglected,  the  Holy  Eucharist  rarely 
celebrated,  the  Sacrament  of  Baptism  carelessly  admin- 
istered ;  little  care  taken  to  prepare  the  young  for 
Confirmation  ;  fervent  and  heart-stirring  sermons  re- 
placed by  dull,  undogmatic  addresses,  or  moral  essays, 
either  wholly  political,  or  a  mixture  of  politics  and  re- 
ligion, which  made  Blackstone  exclaim,  that  whenever 
he  heard  a  preacher  of  note  in  London,  he  could  never 
discern  whether  he  was  a  follower  of  Confucius,  of 
Mahomet,  or  Christ. 

As  to  the  proper  mode  of  observing  Sunday,  there 
always  has  been  a  wide  divergence  of  opinion  in  Eng- 
land. We  have  already  seen,  in  a  former  part  of  this 
work,  that  James  L  published,  and  Charles  I.  re-pub- 
lished, the  "  Book  of  Sports,"  which  much  disgusted 

'  Church  Quarterly,  vol.  viii.  292. 


476         THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


the  Puritans.  The  Puritans  under  the  Commonwealth 
abolished,  and  Charles  II.  after  his  restoration  re- 
established, the  usages  of  his  father's  reign,  although 
he  forbade  the  use  of  coaches  on  Sunday ;  under 
him  Sunday  came  to  be  considered  a  fitting  time 
for  social  hilarity,  for  cards  and  supper-parties ;  but 
after  Charles's  time,  both  High  Churchmen  and  Puri- 
tans joined  in  a  more  decent  observance  of  the  day. 
But  the  Sabbatarianism  of  Scotland  never  obtained 
in  England,  nor  was  the  Christian  Sunday,  even  in 
name,  converted  into  the  Jewish  Sabbath  till  towards 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  centur}^,  when  some  of  the 
Wesleyan  and  Evangelical  leaders  gave  an  impulse 
to  Sabbatarianism,  and  thus  the  Sunday  came  not 
uncommonly  to  be  called  by  the  Jewish  name. 

Such  extremes  have  always  been  opposed  by  the 
sober  sense  of  the  English  Church  ^.  Robert  Nelson, 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  says  of  the  Sabbath  that 
*'  by  Scripture,  antiquity,  and  all  ecclesiastical  writers, 
it  is  commonly  appropriated  to  Saturday,  the  day  of 
the  Jews'  Sabbath."  Seeker  (afterwards  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury)  says,  in  1741,  that  "  one  would  not  by 
any  means  make  the  day  of  rest  wearisome,  nor  for- 
bid cheerfulness,  and  even  innocent  festivity  upon  it, 
much  less  the  expression  of  neighbourly  civility  and 
good-will,  which  are  indeed  a  valuable  part  of  the  in- 
stitution." And  Chillingworth,  the  champion  of  Pro- 
testantism in  the  seventeenth  century,  was  for  some 
time  unable  to  allow  the  fourth  Commandment,  with 
the  prayer  following,  to  hold  its  place  in  the  Commu- 
nion Office. 

8  With  regard  to  opening  the  Crj  stal  Palace  on  Sunday,  the  "  Record  " 
newspaper  (Nov.  19,  1852)  writes  :  "  It  is  surprising  that  any  animal  with 
a  head  of  a  higher  order  than  a  chimpanzee  should  pronounce  it  innocent 
to  open  a  place  for  public  worldly  amusement  on  the  Sabbath." 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 


477 


But  the  habitual  neglect  of  the  observance  of 
Sunday  must  be  reckoned  amongst  the  vices  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Seeker  complained  :  "  People 
of  fashion  ....  have  nearly  thrown  off  the  observance 
of  the  Lord's  day  ;  .  .  .  and  if,  to  avoid  scandal,  they 
sometimes  vouchsafe  their  attendance  at  divine  wor- 
ship in  the  country,  they  seldom  or  never  do  so  in 
the  town."  Cabinet  Councils  were  frequently  held 
on  that  day.  Sunday  card-parties  were  fashionable 
entertainments  in  the  best  circles,  and  were  counte- 
nanced at  Court  under  the  first  two  Georges.  Evelyn, 
in  his  Diary,  complains  of  the  practice,  although  he 
does  not  on  that  account  seem  to  have  shunned  the 
king's  revelry.  The  Essayists  continually  speak  of 
the  prevailing  irreverence  in  church  ;  of  '■  the  bows, 
curtsies,  whisperings,  smiles,  winks,  nods,  with  other 
familiar  acts  of  salutation,"  which  made  an  English  • 
congregation  a  shameful  contrast  to  the  Roman  Ca- 
tholic congregations  of  the  Continent 

In  1 78 1,  the  matter  was  brought  before  Parliament, 
and,  after  much  violent  opposition,  an  Act  was  passed 
by  which  no  place  might  be  used  for  public  amusement 
or  public  debate  on  the  Lord's  day,  to  which  people 
are  admitted  by  payment ;  and  so  the  present  day  has 
witnessed  the  strange  anomaly  of  closing  museums  and 
places  of  valuable  instruction  on  the  only  day  when  the 
masses  of  the  people  can  avail  themselves  of  them, 
whilst  public  houses,  during  certain  hours,  are  allowed 
to  hold  an  undisputed  pre-eminence 

To  the  eighteenth  century  we  must  attribute  the 
general  introduction  of  pews  :  about  the  same  time, 

^  Lecky,  vol.  ii.  534. 

'  In  1875,  the  Brighton  Aquarium  Company  was  fined  ^200  under 
this  act. 


478        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


the  payment  of  pew-rents  for  the  maintenance  of  the 
clergyman  was  adopted  ^.  Records  as  early  as  a.d.  1450 
shew  that  pews,  or  rather  pties,  existed  in  England 
before  the  Reformation,  but  they  were  at  that  time 
plain,  open  benches,  facing  eastwards.  The  modern 
idea  of  high  enclosures  originated  with  the  Puritans, 
who,  as  they  objected  to  certain  points  in  the  service 
to  which  they  were  bound  to  conform,  such  as  bowing 
at  the  name  of  Jesus  and  the  Gloria  Patri,  sought  to 
conceal  their  Nonconformity  by  hiding  themselves  from 
the  congregation.  But  high-backed  pews  were  not 
common  before  Queen  Anne's  reign,  and  are  said  to 
have  been  then  introduced  in  consequence  of  complaints 
that  the  courtiers  and  maids  of  honour  occupied  them- 
selves in  church  by  looking  at,  and  making  signs  to, 
each  other,  instead  of  attending  to  their  devotions  ; 
.  henceforward  they  became  so  regular  a  part  of  the 
church's  furniture,  that  in  1712,  in  the  regulations 
specified  by  both  Houses  of  Convocation  for  the  con- 
secration of  churches,  it  is  especially  enjoined  that 
the  church  be  previously  pewed^  although  the  High 
Church  party  objected  to  the  "  Protestant  pews "  of 
their  opponents.  Not  only  were  these  pews  an  injury 
to  the  architectural  effect  of  the  churches,  and  a  se- 
rious eye-sore,  as  well  as  injustice  to  the  poor,  and 
a  cause  of  jealousy  amongst  the  parishioners  ;  but  they 
entailed  a  twenty  per  cent,  loss  of  accommodation, 
which  led  to  another  eye-sore,  in  the  erection  of  galle- 

Sir  Christopher  Wren,  who  was  appointed  one  of  the  Commissioners 
under  the  Act  for  building  fifty  new  churches,  says,  "It  were  to  be  wished 
there  were  to  be  no  pews,  but  benches;  but  there  is  no  stemming  the  tide 
of  profit,  and  the  advantage  of  pew-keepers,  especially  since  by  pews,  in 
the  chapel-of-ease,  the  minister  is  chiefly  supported." 
'  Abbey  and  Overton,  ii.  422. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 


479 


ries,  raised  sometimes  one  over  another,  to  compensate 
for  the  space  wasted  by  the  pews. 

We  have  dwelt  at  some  length  on  the  state  of 
religion,  or  rather  irreligion,  prevalent  during  the 
eighteenth  century,  because  to  it  we  believe  is  to 
be  attributed  that  coldness  in  the  ceremonial  of  the 
Church,  which,  having  crept  in  at  that  time,  still  finds 
favour  in  some  quarters  in  the  present  day.  It  has 
been  shewn  that  a  different  stamp  of  bishops  and 
clergy  existed  in  that  day  from  those  who  had  before 
adorned  the  Church ;  that  the  Latitudinarian  obj^ect 
of  assimilating  the  Church's  ritual  to  that  of  the  fol- 
lowers of  Calvin  had  in  the  main  succeeded ;  that 
a  lower  standard  of  ceremonial  than  was  aimed  at 
by  the  reformers,  and  which  had  prevailed  so  late  as 
Charles  the  Second's  reign,  was  the  consequence  of 
their  teaching ;  hence  arises  more  than  a  suspicion 
that  to  the  eighteenth  century,  and  not  the  Reforma- 
tion, is  to  be  attributed  that  neglect  in  doctrine,  and 
especially  ritual,  which  till  late  years  has  marked  our 
Church,  and  of  which  we  are  now  seeing  the  revival, 
under  great  difficulties,  accomplished 

It  is  certain  that,  owing  to  the  anti-ritualistic  proclivities  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  the  discontinuance  of  a  distinctive  out-door  dress, 
such  as  is  common  in  other  Catholic  countries,  became  general  amongst 
the  clergy. 


« 

CHAPTER  II. 


QUEEN  ANNe's  REIGN.  THE  HANQVERIAN  SUCCESSION. 

TT  was,  perhaps,  its  prosperity  at  the  commencement 
of  the  eighteenth  century, — the  calm  succeeding  so 
suddenly  to  the  storm, — that  proved  the  Church's 
greatest  danger.  Before  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  the  Church  had  been  putting  forth  new  life. 
Religious  societies  had  been  established  everywhere 
throughout  the  country,  the  object  of  which  was  to 
promote  holiness  of  life ;  the  attendance  at  Divine 
service,  both  on  Sundays  and  week-days,  and  the  more 
frequent  celebration  of  the  Holy  Eucharist ;  the  stricter 
observance  of  Saints'  days  ;  the  relief  of  the  poor ;  the 
instruction  of  the  ignorant ;  the  suppression  of  vice  ; 
the  release  of  prisoners,  and  such  kindred  purposes. 
From  these  religious  societies  sprang,  in  1698,  the 
"  Society  for  Promoting  Christian  Knowledge,"  which 
was  founded  by  five  gentlemen, — Lord  Guildford,  Sir 
Humphry  Mackworth,  Judge  Hook,  Colonel  Colches- 
ter, and  Dr.  Bray;  with  the  objects:  (i.)  "  Of  pro- 
moting and  encouraging  the  erection  of  charity  schools 
in  all  parts  of  England  and  Wales  ;  (2.)  Of  dispersing, 
both  at  home  and  abroad.  Bibles  and  tracts  of  religion, 
and  in  general  of  advancing  the  honour  of  God,  and 
the  good  of  mankind,  by  promoting  Christian  know- 
ledge, both  at  home  and  in  other  parts  of  the  world, 
by  the  best  methods  that  should  offer."  The  second 
of  these  objects  was  in  1701,  chiefly  owing  to  the  ex- 
ertions of  Dr.  Bray,  who  had  acted  as  the  Bishop  of 
London's  Commissary  in  Maryland,  North  America, 


THE  HANOVERIAN  SUCCESSION. 


delegated  to  a  branch  society,  founded  under  the  name 
of  the  Society  for  the  "  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  in 
Foreign  Parts,"  for  the  maintenance  of  Christian  mis- 
sions in  North  America  and  other  possessions  of  the 
British  Crown. 

In  1704,  took  place  at  St.  Andrew's,  Holborn,  the 
first  assemblage  of  the  metropolitan  charity  school- 
children ;  at  that  time,  there  had  been  founded  in  and 
about  London  alone  fifty-four  schools,  numbering  2,131 
children;  in  1712,  the  number  of  charity-schools  in 
London  and  Westminster  was  117,  and  the  number 
of  children  5,000.  Such  was  the  beginning  of  our 
charity-schools,  which  Addison  describes  as  the  glory 
of  the  age  in  which  we  live. 

In  1704,  the  Queen  performed  a  munificent  act  of 
restitution  to  the  Church.  First-fruits,  or  annates,  that 
is,  a  tax  of  the  first  year's  entire  income  from  a  bene- 
fice ;  and  tenths,  or  the  annual  payment  of  the  tenth 
part  of  the  income,  had,  as  we  have  before  seen,  been 
first  imposed  by  the  Popes  for  the  support  of  the 
Crusades,  but  had  continued  long  after  the  Crusades 
had  ceased.  The  clergy,  expecting  to  be  delivered 
from  this  hardship,  entreated  Henry  VIII.  to  deliver 
them  from  it ;  he  answered  their  prayer  by  transferring 
it  from  the  Pope  into  his  own  pocket.  Queen  Mary 
remitted  the  tax  to  the  Church  ;  Elizabeth  reimposed 
and  even  increased  it;  and  in  the  time  of  Charles  II. 
it  was  regarded  as  an  excellent  fund  for  providing  for 
the  king's  female  favourites,  and  their  numerous  chil- 
dren \  On  the  anniversary  of  Queen  Anne's  birthday 
in  1704,  the  Secretary  of  State  brought  a  message 
from  her  to  the  Commons,  announcing  her  intention  to 
grant  the  whole  revenue  arising  out  of  the  first-fruits 
"  Mahon's  Life  of  Queen  Anne. 
I  i 


482 


QUEEN  ANNe's  RETGN. 


and  tenths  for  the  benefit  of  the  poor  clergy.  On  re- 
ceiving the  message,  a  bill  was  passed,  enabling  the 
queen  to  alienate  from  the  Crown  this  branch  of 
revenue,  and  to  create,  by  charter,  a  Corporation,  by 
the  name  of  "  The  Governors  of  the  Bounty  of  Queen 
Anne  for  the  augmentation  of  the  maintenance  of  the 
Poor  Clergy."  The  money  arising  from  the  Bounty, 
which  is  applied  to  the  increase  of  poor  livings  and 
the  building  of  parsonages,  has  been  an  incalculable 
benefit  to  the  Church. 

We  must  now  resume  the  history  of  Convocation 
from  the  end  of  the  last  century.  It  was  evident  that 
the  antagonism  caused  in  the  Church  by  the  appoint- 
ment of  William's  Latitudinarian  bishops,  must  sooner 
or  later  lead  to  a  dangerous  crisis.  There  were,  as 
we  have  seen  in  the  previous  chapter,  two  conflicting 
parties, — the  High  Church,  who  were  opposed  to  the 
Whig  government  (which  had  again  returned  to  power) 
and  favourable  to  the  Church,  and  the  Low  Church, 
who  were  favourable  to  the  government  and  dissen- 
ters ;  to  the  latter  belonged  the  bishops  who  had  been 
appointed  by  William ;  to  the  former  the  other  clergy, 
those  in  the  country  almost  to  a  man,  and  by  far  the 
greater  part  of  the  town  clergy,  together  with  the  poor, 
and  the  country  gentry  ;  whence  the  terms  "  the  coun- 
try party  "  and  "  the  Church  party  "  came  to  be  almost 
equivalent.  Both  the  Upper  and  Lower  Houses  of 
Convocation  had  powerful  and  equally-matched  leaders, 
for  whilst  to  the  former  belonged  Bishop  Burnet,  the 
latter  could  boast  Dean  Atterbury ;  a  series  of  colli- 
sions which  took  place  between  the  two  houses  was 
assigned  as  the  reason  for  the  suppression  of  Con- 
vocation ;  we  may  perhaps  find  another,  and  possibly 
a  truer  reason,  in  another  direction. 


THE  HANOVERIAN  SUCCESSION. 


In  the  reign  of  Edward  I.  the  custom  commenced  of 
inserting  a  clause,  known  as  the  prmnunientes  clause  ^, 
into  the  bishops'  writ,  prcsmonishing  them  to  bring 
certain  clergy  with  them  to  Parliament  to  vote  sub- 
sidies together  with  the  House  of  Commons.  "  It  is 
now  perhaps  scarcely  known,"  says  Mr.  Hallam,  "by 
many  persons  not  unversed  in  the  constitution  of  their 
country,  that  besides  the  bishops  and  baronial  abbots, 
the  inferior  clergy  were  regularly  summoned  at  every 
Parliament.  In  the  writ  of  summons  to  a  bishop  he 
is  still  directed  to  cause  the  dean  of  his  cathedral 
church,  the  archdeacons  of  his  diocese,  with  one 
proctor  from  the  chapter  of  the  former,  and  two  from 
the  body  of  his  clergy,  to  attend  with  him  at  the  place 
of  meeting.  This  might  by  an  observant  reader  be 
confounded  with  the  summons  to  the  Convocation, 
which  is  composed  of  the  same  constituent  parts,  and 
by  modern  usage  is  made  to  assemble  on  the  same 
day.  But  it  may  easily  be  distinguished  by  this  dif- 
ference ;  that  the  Convocation  is  provincial,  and  sum- 
moned by  the  Metropolitans  of  Canterbury  and  York  ; 
whereas  the  clause  commonly  denoted  prcsmiinictitcs 
(from  its  first  word)  in  the  writ  to  each  bishop,  pro- 
ceeds from  the  Crown,  and  enjoins  the  attendance  of 
the  clergy  at  the  national  council  of  Parliament." 

This  arrangement  the  clergy  soon  resented ;  their 

This  clause,  which  was  so  known  from  its  first  word,  was  as  follows  : 
"■  PrcEmiinientes  priorum  et  capitulum  ecclesiae  vestrjE,  archidiaconos, 
totumque  clerum  vestras  diocesis,  facientes  quod  ibidem  Prior  et  Archi- 
diaconi  in  propriis  personis  suis,  et  dictum  capitulum  per  unum,  idemque 
clerum  per  duos  procuratores  idoneos,  plenam  et  sufficientem  potestatem 
ab  ipsis  capitulo  et  clero  habentes,  unk  vobiscum  intersint,  modis  omni- 
bus tunc  ibidem  ad  tractandum,  ordinandum,  et  faciendum  nobiscum  et 
cum  cseteris  prjelatis  et  proceribus  et  aliis  incolis  regni  nostri,  qualiter 
sit  hujusmodi  periculis  et  excogitatis  malitiis  obviandum." 

I  i  2 


484 


QUEEN  ANNe's  REIGN. 


chief  parliamentary  work  was  to  tax  themselves  for 
the  king,  and  this  they  preferred  to  do  in  their  own 
Convocations,  as  a  separate  estate  of  the  realm ;  and 
as  Convocation  met  at  the  same  time  as  Parliament, 
they  could  do  what  was  required  of  them  as  well  in 
one  house  as  the  other.  The  money  voted  in  Convo- 
cation was  no  contemptible  sum.  In  the  fourteenth 
century  ^20,000,  the  amount  of  the  clerical  tenth,  was 
an  important  item  in  the  royal  revenue,  which  did  not 
exceed  ;!^8o,ooo.  But  after  the  submission  of  the 
clergy  to  Henry  VIII.,  the  House  of  Commons  had 
taken  upon  itself  to  interfere  in  Church  matters ;  so 
in  1 548,  the  clergy  asserted  their  rights,  and  petitioned 
that  they,  "according  to  the  tenor  of  the  king's  writ 
and  the  ancient  laws  and  customs  of  this  noble  realm, 
might  have  their  room  and  place,  and  be  associated 
with  the  Commons  in  the  nether  House  of  this  present 
Parliament " ;"  or,  "  that  no  acts  affecting  the  Church 
might  be  passed  in  that  House  without  their  consent." 
To  this  petition  they  never  received  a  reply. 

As  long,  however,  as  they  adhered  to  their  resolu- 
tion of  taxing  themselves  in  Convocation,  and  were 
therefore  useful  to  the  Crown,  they  secured  the  right 
of  meeting,  whenever  Parliament  was  summoned  for 
a  like  purpose  ;  and  that  right  of  meeting  involved  the 
right  of  petitioning,  and,  within  certain  limits,  of  legis- 
lating for  themselves  ^. 

This  continued  till  a.d.  1664.  In  that  year  the 
clergy  petitioned  the  House  of  Commons  to  "  consider 
and  determine  some  more  equal  manner  of  raising 
subsidies  upon  the  clergy,  the  present  measure  thereof 
to  them  bearing  no  proportion  to  the  rest  of  his  ma- 


'  Wilkins'  Concilia^  iv.  16. 


Stubbs'  Const.  Hist. 


THE  HANOVERIAN  SUCCESSION. 


jesty's  subjects " ;"  in  consequence  of  this  petition,  by 
a  verbal  agreement  between  Lord  Chancellor  Claren- 
don  and  Archbishop  Sheldon,  the  custom  of  the  clergy 
taxing  themselves  in  Convocation  ceased,  and  hence- 
forward they  were  included  in  the  taxes  prepared  by 
the  House  of  Commons;  they  thus  lost  importance 
as  a  separate  estate  of  the  realm,  and  to  make  up  for 
their  loss,  they  obtained  the  inadequate  privilege  of 
voting  for  members  of  Parliament.  Warburton  says 
in  one  of  his  letters,  that  "  Convocation,  by  giving  up 
their  old  right  of  taxing  themselves,  seem  to  have 
given  up  their  right  of  meeting  and  debating."  At 
any  rate,  the  abandonment  of  the  right  rendered  Con- 
vocation less  necessary  to  the  Crown,  and  doubtless 
paved  the  way  for  its  suppression. 

Bearing  the  above  facts  in  mind,  we  shall  be  better 
able  to  form  a  correct  judgment  of  the  disputes  be- 
tween the  two  Houses,  and  of  their  final  result. 

After  its  suppression  for  eleven  years,  Tillotson, 
the  staunch  opponent  of  Convocation,  being  dead  (al- 
though he  was  succeeded  by  Tenison,  an  archbishop 
scarcely  less  Latitudinarian  than  himself),  and  a  Tory 
Government  having  succeeded  to  the  long  Whig  ad- 
ministration. Convocation  was  authorized  to  assemble 
in  1 701.  But  the  two  Houses  assembled  under  feel- 
ings of  mutual  ill-will,  and  the  sole  business  of  the 
year  was  a  contest  between  them.  Their  meeting 
was  opposed  to  the  wishes  of  the  bishops  ;  the  Lower 
House  attributed  to  the  Upper  the  long  discontinuance 
of  their  debates,  and  suspected  them  of  Latitudina- 
rianism  :  perhaps  also,  owing  to  the  long  suppression 
of  Convocation,  the  members  of  the  two  houses  had 
forgotten  their  distinctive  prerogatives,  and  thus  a  dis- 

'  Wilkins'  Concilia,  iv.  580. 


486 


QUEEN  ANNE's  REIGN. 


pute  arose  as  to  the  archbishop's  power  to  prorogue 
the  Lower  House,  which  the  latter  saw  gave  the 
Upper  House  the  power  of  breaking  off  their  debates 
at  any  moment.  No  doubt  the  Lower  House  were 
exacting,  but  the  Upper  were  unconcihatory ;  and  nei- 
ther would  give  way.  The  difficulties  were  increased 
when  the  Lower  House  condemned  the  works  of  To- 
land  and  other  Deists,  still  more  so  when  they  pro- 
ceeded to  censure  Bishop  Burnet's  book  on  the  Thirty- 
nine  Articles.  The  bishops  maintained  that  they  had 
no  right  to  examine  a  book  without  consulting  them, 
and  no  power  to  condemn  a  book  judicially  without 
the  king's  licence  :  the  disputes  could  not  be  healed ; 
Convocation  was  prorogued  by  royal  writ,  and  dis- 
solved soon  after,  on  the  dissolution  of  Parliament  at 
the  king's  death,  in  1702. 

During  the  whole  of  Queen  Anne's  reign  (1702 — 
1 714)  the  quarrels  continued.  In  1703,  the  Lower 
House  formally  complained  of  the  lax  administration 
of  the  bishops ;  again,  in  1 704,  of  the  bishops  being 
the  great  impediment  to  anything  being  done  in  Con- 
vocation ;  also,  of  the  great  hardship  to  themselves  in 
being  obliged  to  administer  the  Holy  Eucharist  to 
schismatics.  In  1705,  a  cry  of  "the  Church  in  danger," 
in  consequence  of  the  anti-Church  feeling  produced  by 
the  Marlborough  influence,  was  raised  in  the  Lower 
House ;  the  Archbishop  of  York  (Sharpe)  asserted 
that  the  Church  was  in  danger,  from  the  great  increase 
of  dissenters ;  the  Bishop  of  London  (Compton),  that 
there  was  danger  from  the  vile  books  set  out  by  the 
press,  alluding  particularly  to  a  sermon  which  had  been 
preached  by  Hoadly  before  the  Lord  Mayor ;  but  the 
bishops,  under  the  influence  of  Burnet,  pronounced 
that  the  Church  was  not  in  danger ;  and  the  Lower 


THE  HANOVERIAN  SUCCESSION. 


487 


House  brought  down  upon  itself  the  censure  of  Par- 
liament, and  afterwards  of  the  queen. 

In  1707,  the  union  of  England  and  Scotland  created 
alarm,  not  only  on  account  of  the  recognition  of  Pres- 
byterianism  by  the  State,  but  also  from  fear  of  the 
influence  which  would  be  exercised  upon  Parliament 
by  the  addition  of  forty-five  Presbyterian  members. 
To  prevent  the  Lower  House  from  taking  counsel  on 
this  matter,  Convocation  was  summarily  prorogued  ; 
the  Lower  House  resented  the  breach  of  privilege,  and 
complained  that  never,  from  the  time  of  the  submission 
of  the  clergy,  a  period  of  173  years,  had  Convocation 
been  thus  dealt  with  during  the  sitting  of  Parliament. 
The  queen  complained  of  their  action  as  an  invasion  of 
her  supremacy. 

But  the  High  Church  influence  went  on  steadily 
increasing,  and  the  cry  of  "  the  Church  in  danger"  was 
again  raised ;  the  people  were  growing  stronger  in 
support  of  the  Church ;  the  ministry  was  growing  un- 
popular, even  the  queen  began  to  share  their  unpopu- 
larity, and  not  only  a  religious  discontent,  but  serious 
symptoms  of  Jacobitism  began  to  manifest  themselves. 

These  feelings  found  vent  in  the  impeachment  of 
Dr.  Sacheverell.  Sacheverell,  the  grandson  of  an  In- 
dependent minister,  and  the  son  of  a  Low  Church 
clergyman,  was  in  1 705  appointed  Preacher  at  St.  Sa- 
viour's, Southwark,  where  he  preached  his  favourite 
doctrine  of  passive  obedience  before  crowded  congre- 
gations, in  opposition  to  Hoadly,  Rector  of  St.  Peter- 
le-Poer,  who  carried  the  opposite  doctrine  to  an  equal 
extreme.  Sacheverell  preached  two  sermons,  in  the 
first  of  which  he  complained  of  the  dangers  which 
beset  the  Church,  and  the  betrayal  of  its  rights  and 
interests;  the  second,  preached  before  the  Lord  Mayor 


488 


QUEEN  ANNe's  REIGN. 


on  the  subject  "perils  from  false  brethren,"  has  ren- 
dered his  name  famous  in  history.  Whilst  he  in- 
sinuated that  Hoadly  and  Burnet  were  the  "false 
brethren,"  he  violently  attacked  the  Revolution  settle- 
ment and  the  Act  of  Toleration;  asserted  the  principles 
of  non-resistance  and  passive  obedience,  and  described 
the  Church  as  being  in  imminent  danger.  This  sermon 
was  so  highly  approved  by  the  Lord  Mayor,  who  was 
a  high  Tory,  that  Sacheverell  was  induced  to  pub- 
lish it,  and  in  a  few  days  its  circulation  amounted 
to  40,000  copies  ;  but  by  other  people  it  was  pro- 
nounced to  be  sheer  Jacobitism.  Sacheverell  had  al- 
ready made  himself  obnoxious  to  the  Whig  govern- 
ment, especially  the  Prime  Minister,  Godolphin,  whom 
he  satirized  under  the  name  of  "  Volpone,"  or  old  fox  ; 
by  publishing  his  sermon  he  had  brought  himself 
within  their  reach,  and  thus  led  to  his  own  impeach- 
ment. From  the  moment  of  his  impeachment  he  was 
the  hero  of  the  day.  On  his  way  to  his  trial,  crowds 
gathered  round  him,  desiring  to  kiss  his  hand,  and 
shouting,  "  Sacheverell  and  the  Church  for  ever." 
The  pews  of  the  meeting-houses  were  burnt ;  Burnet's 
house  was  in  danger  ;  and  the  crowds  had  to  be  re- 
strained  by  the  Guards.  Sacheverell  had  the  sym- 
pathy of  the  queen,  of  the  clergy  headed  by  Atterbury, 
and  the  community  at  large.  If  the  queen  was  seen 
in  public,  she  was  greeted  with  cheers  :  "  God  bless 
your  majesty ;  we  hope  your  majesty  is  in  favour  of 
High  Church  and  Sacheverell."  In  his  trial  by  the 
House  of  Lords,  in  February,  1710,  he  was  found 
guilty  by  69  to  52,  seven  out  of  twelve  bishops  voting 
against  him  ;  but  though  nominally  defeated,  he  was 
virtually  the  victor.  It  was  felt  that  in  the  excited 
state  of  feeling  throughout  the  country,  severity  was 


THE  HANOVERIAN   SUCCESSION,  489 

unsafe ;  the  obnoxious  sermons  were  condemned  to  be 
burnt  by  the  common  hangman,  but  he  was  only  sus- 
pended for  three  years,  with  the  privilege,  during  the 
time,  of  accepting  Church  preferment.  Such  enthu- 
siasm as  had  not  been  exhibited  since  the  acquittal  of 
the  seven  bishops,  everywhere  greeted  him.  There 
were  bonfires  and  illuminations,  not  only  in  London, 
but  in  the  country ;  he  was  debarred  indeed  from 
preaching,  but  crowds  flocked  into  church  to  hear  him 
read  prayers ;  he  was  sent  for  in  all  directions  to  bap- 
tize children,  to  whom  it  was  considered  a  high  honour 
to  be  named  after  him ;  his  journey  from  London  to 
Wales,  to  take  possession  of  a  good  living  which  had 
been  conferred  on  him,  was  a  festal  progress  ;  at  Ban- 
bury and  Warwick,  he  was  met  by  the  mayors  in  their 
robes  of  office  ;  and  at  Shrewsbury  a  crowd  of  4,000 
persons  pressed  forward  to  greet  him  ^ 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say,  that  owing  to  him  the 
Whig  ministry  at  the  elections  suffered  a  crushing  de- 
feat ;  the  new  ministry  were  all  more  or  less  favour- 
able to  the  Jacobite  cause  ;  and  when  his  suspension 
was  ended,  Sacheverell  was  appointed  by  the  new 
House  of  Commons  to  preach  the  sermon  at  the  anni- 
versary of  the  Restoration ;  he  received  the  thanks  of 
the  House,  and  was  soon  appointed  to  the  substantial 
rectory  of  St.  Andrew's,  Holborn. 

The  Tory  party,  now  restored  to  power,  were  strong 
enough  to  pass  an  act  which  had  long  been  a  part  of 
their  policy,  the  "  Occasional  Conformity  "  Act.  The 
"Test  Act,"  by  making  the  Holy  Communion  a  quali- 
fication, had  effectually  excluded  Romanists,  but  it  did 
not  exclude  Protestant  dissenters,  who,  though  they 


'  Mahon,  Life  of  Queen  Anne,  p.  416. 


490 


QUEEN  ANNe's  REIGN. 


attended  their  own  chapels,  had  no  objection  to  an 
oci:aswna/  reception  of  the  Holy  Communion,  in  order 
to  obtain  or  hold  their  offices.  In  1702,  a  bill  against 
occasional  conformity  had  passed  the  Commons,  but 
although  the  queen  sent  her  royal  Consort  to  the 
House  of  Lords  to  vote  for  it,  so  great  was  the  oppo- 
sition excited  against  it  by  King  William's  bishops, 
that  the  queen  was  induced  abruptly  to  end  the  session. 
A  similar  bill  met  a  similar  fate  in  the  House  of  Lords 
in  1 703  ;  in  1 704,  a  party  in  the  House  of  Commons 
tried  to  "tack"  it  on  the  Land  Tax  Bill;  the  "tackers," 
however  (as  they  were  called),  did  not  succeed,  and  in 
the  House  of  Lords,  although  the  queen  herself  was 
present,  the  bill  was  lost. 

But  now,  under  the  new  Tory  Government,  and  the 
auspices  of  Lord  Nottingham,  the  bill  was  carried  in 
the  House  of  Lords  without  a  division.  It  enacted 
"  that  all  persons  in  places  of  profit,  and  all  the  com- 
mon-councilmen  in  corporations,  who  should  be  at 
meeting  for  Divine  worship  where  there  were  above 
ten  persons  more  than  the  family,  in  which  the  Com- 
mon Prayer  was  not  used,  or  where  the  Queen  and 
the  Princess  Sophia  were  not  prayed  for,  should,  upon 
conviction,  forfeit  their  place  of  trust ;  .  .  .  and  such 
persons  were  to  continue  incapable  of  any  employment 
till  they  should  depose  that  for  a  whole  year  together 
they  had  been  at  no  conventicle^;"  and  the  House 
of  Commons  added,  "  a  penalty  on  the  offender  of 
£\o,  which  was  to  be  given  to  the  informer." 

In  1714,  the  tyrannical  "Schism  Act"  passed  the 
Commons  by  237  to  126  votes.  As  passed  in  the  Com- 
mons, it  provided  that  no  one,  under  pain  of  three 

K  Burnet's  Hist,  of  his  Own  Time,  ii,  585. 


THE   HANOVERIAN  SUCCESSION. 


491 


months*  imprisonment,  should  keep  either  a  pubHc  or 
private  school,  or  act  as  usher  or  tutor,  except  under 
licence  from  a  bishop,  an  engagement  that  he  con- 
formed to  the  Liturgy,  and  had  received  the  Holy  Com- 
munion within  a  year.  The  act,  with  certain  modifica- 
tions, viz.  that  it  should  not  apply  to  schoolmistresses, 
to  instructors  in  reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic,  or  to 
tutors  in  noblemen's  families,  passed  the  House  of 
Lords  by  77  to  72  ;  and  it  received  the  royal  assent; 
but  the  very  day  on  which  it  was  to  come  into  opera- 
tion the  queen  died. 

Queen  Anne  died  in  17 14;  had  her  death  occurred 
three  years  sooner,  in  the  midst  of  the  Sacheverell 
excitement,  it  is  more  than  probable  that  the  Pre- 
tender would  have  been  called  to  the  throne ;  had 
the  Stuarts  been  brought  back  in  17 14,  what  would 
have  been  the  result  to  the  Church  it  is  impossible 
to  conjecture.  The  queen  died  before  the  plans  of 
the  Jacobites  were  fully  matured.  A  bill  had  passed 
in  1 70 1,  devolving  the  Crown  on  the  Electress  Sophia 
of  Hanover,  granddaughter  of  James  L,  and  upon  her 
descendants  ;  the  Electress  had  died  only  a  few  weeks 
before  the  queen,  and  so  her  son — who,  if  anything, 
was  a  Lutheran — succeeded  to  the  throne,  with  no 
good- will  from  the  friends  of  the  Church,  under  the 
title  of  George  L 

The  first  Church  appointment  of  the  new  reign 
seemed  to  give  fair  promise.  Tenison,  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury,  having  died  in  171 5,  Wake,  Bishop  of 
Lincoln, — who,  as  far  back  as  the  reign  of  James  II., 
had  distinguished  himself  as  a  controversialist  against 
the  famous  Bossuet,  Bishop  of  Meaux,^ — was  appointed 
to  succeed  him.  But  the  next  appointment  was  a  very 
different  one.    Hoadly,  who,  as  early  as  1705,  had 


492 


QUEEN  ANNE's  REIGN. 


drawn  on  himself  a  censure  from  Convocation,  was 
appointed  to  the  see  of  Bangor  (which,  however,  he  is 
said  never  to  have  visited).  Something  Hke  the  stigma 
of  a  traitor  attaches  to  Hoadly,  "the  object  of  Whig 
idolatry  and  Tory  abhorrence,"  as  Gibbon  styles  him. 
Not  only  did  he — in  a  pamphlet  in  answer  to  Dr. 
Hickes,  the  Non-juring  bishop,  which  he  wrote  soon 
after  his  consecration — deny  the  necessity  of  being  in 
communion  with  any  visible  Church  ;  not  only  did  he 
make  common  cause  with  dissenters  ;  in  these  respects 
he  acted,  perhaps,  in  common  with  other  Latitudi- 
narian  bishops  ;  but  he  occupied  a  very  questionable 
position  as  the  intimate  friend  and  admirer  of  the 
great  Arian  leader,  Clarke. 

But  we  will  pass  at  once  to  the  troubles  which  he 
brought  upon  the  Church.  In  171 7,  he  preached  be- 
fore the  king  a  sermon  on  the  text,  "  My  kingdom  is 
not  of  this  world,"  in  which  he  inveighed  against  the 
idea  of  there  being  any  visible  Church,  his  object 
being  to  shew  that  no  human  power  has  a  right  to 
impose  religious  tests  or  punishments,  and  that  Christ 
has  not  delegated  this  power  to  any  ecclesiastical  au- 
thority. This  sermon  was  the  origin  of  the  great  Ban- 
gorian  Controversy.  The  Lower  House  of  Convoca- 
tion, on  May  10,  171 7,  severely  censured  the  sermon, 
as  being  subversive  of  all  government  and  Church 
discipline.  The  Upper  House,  now  under  the  pre- 
sidentship of  Archbishop  Wake,  Burnet  having  died 
in  1 71 5,  was  willing  to  join  the  Lower  House  in  its 
condemnation  of  the  sermon.  To  prevent  the  mea- 
sure from  being  carried,  the  king  interfered  ;  Convo- 
cation was  prorogued  till  November  23,  and  never 
met  again  for  business  till  very  recent  times.  Five 
of  the  royal  chaplains  were  removed  for  writing  against 


THE  HANOVERIAN  SUCCESSION. 


493 


Hoadly,  who  continued  to  receive  favours  from  the 
king.  In  1721,  he  was  translated  to  the  see  of  Here- 
ford; in  1723,  to  Sahsbury ;  and  in  1734,  to  Winches- 
ter, which  he  held  till  his  death,  at  the  age  of  85  years, 
in  I  761. 

In  1 71 7,  the  year  that  witnessed  the  suppression 
of  Convocation,  a  correspondence  was  begun  between 
Archbishop  Wake  and  Du  Pin,  the  Head  of  the  Theo- 
logical College  of  the  Sorbonne,  with  a  view  to  the 
reunion  of  the  Anglican  and  Galilean  Churches.  The 
admiration  which  the  latter  Church  had  obtained  for 
itself  by  such  names  as  Fenelon,  Paschal,  and  Bossuet, 
and  the  noble  assertion  of  its  rights  against  Roman 
aggression,  attracted  towards  it  the  sympathy  of  this 
country.  In  1713,  Pope  Clement  XI.  had  issued  the 
famous  Bull,  "  Unigenitus,"  against  the  "  Reflexions 
Morales"  of  Quesnel,  a  work  which,  though  published 
with  the  approval  of  Cardinal  Noailles,  Bishop  of 
Chalons,  and  later  Archbishop  of  Paris,  was  after- 
wards found  to  revive  all  the  most  obnoxious  doc- 
trines of  Jansenism.  De  Noailles,  and  other  Galilean 
bishops,  refused  to  accept  the  Bull  except  under  cer- 
tain conditions ;  fourteen  bishops  formally  opposed  it ; 
and  eventually,  in  171 7,  a  declaration  was  put  forth, 
encouraged  by  Noailles,  and  to  which  the  theological 
faculty  of  Paris  adhered,  appealing  from  the  Pope  to 
a  General  Council  ;  and  a  desire  having  been  ex- 
pressed by  the  Galilean  for  a  reunion  with  the  Eng- 
lish Church,  a  correspondence  was  begun  by  Du  Pin, 
the  head  of  the  theological  faculty,  and  Archbishop 
Wake,  with  that  view.  The  main  point  insisted  on 
was  the  principle  of  the  freedom  of  national  Churches, 
and  the  independence  of  the  Galilean  Church  from 
Rome ;  if  this  were  effected,  the  archbishop  saw  no 


494 


QUEEN  ANNE's  REIGN. 


essential  points  of  difference.  The  two  Churches 
might "  own  each  other  as  true  brethren,  and  branches 
of  the  CathoHc  Christian  Church  ;"  it  might  be  neces- 
sary that  some  sHght  modifications  should  be  made  ; 
where  they  differed,  each  Church  was  to  preserve  its 
own  views  of  doctrine,  "  till  God  should  bring  a  union 
of  those  also."  In  this  friendly  and  hopeful  manner 
the  negotiations  were  being  carried  on.  The  last 
letter  was  addressed  by  Archbishop  Wake  to  Du 
Pin  on  May  i,  1719,  but  before  it  arrived  in  Paris, 
Du  Pin  was  dead,  and  so  unfortunately  the  matter 
ended. 

Another  correspondence,  springing  partly  out  of 
this,  ensued  between  Archbishop  Wake  and  Cou- 
rayer,  who  published,  in  1727,  his  "Defence  of  the 
Orders  of  the  English  Church."  The  work  having 
been  formally  censured  by  an  assembly  of  French 
cardinals  and  bishops,  Courayer  left  France  and  came 
to  England,  where  he  was  kindly  received  by  the 
primate,  and  the  University  of  Oxford  conferred  on 
him  the  degree  of  D.C.  L.  He  died  in  1776,  at 
the  age  of  ninety,  and  was  buried  in  Westminster 
Abbey. 

In  1 718,  an  act^  annulling  the  Occasional  Con- 
formity and  Schism  Acts  was  passed  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  but  only  by  a  majority  of  41  votes 
(243  against  202)  ;  and  even  this  small  majority  was 
chiefly  due  to  the  Scotch  members,  thirty-four  out 
of  thirty-seven  of  whom  voted  for  the  measure.  Lord 
Stanhope,  who  was  then  at  the  head  of  affairs,  was 

This  act,  however,  forbade  (but  it  was  repealed  by  the  Statute  Law 
Revision  Act  of  rS/i)  any  mayor,  baiUff,  or  other  magistrate  to  attend 
any  rehgious  form  of  worship,  except  that  of  the  Church,  in  a  gown, 
or  the  ensigns  of  his  office. 


THE   HANOVERIAN  SUCCESSION. 


495 


desirous  of  abolishing  also  the  Test  Act ;  this,  how- 
ever, he  found  to  be  impracticable  ;  but  almost  every 
year,  from  1727  to  1828,  an  Indemnity  Act  was 
passed,  which  practically  threw  open  the  gates  of 
all  of¥ices  to  Protestant  dissenters,  quite  as  fully  as 
if  the  law  had  been  actually  repealed 

In  1737,  Archbishop  Wake  died;  Gibson,  Bishop 
of  London,  who  had  been  translated  from  Lincoln 
in  1723,  the  ecclesiastical  lawyer  and  the  historian 
of  synods,  was  so  confessedly  the  first  bishop  of  the 
day,  that  he  was  commonly  spoken  of  as  "  the  heir- 
apparent  of  Canterbury ; "  unfortunately,  he  had  of- 
fended Sir  Horace  Walpole  by  voting  one  way  when 
he  expected  him  to  vote  another  ;  he  was,  therefore, 
put  aside,  and  Potter,  Bishop  of  Oxford,  who  had 
been  Regius  Professor  in  the  University,  who,  though 
a  Whig,  was  a  High  Churchman,  was  advanced  to 
the  primacy. 

Nothing  more  clearly  shews  the  decay  of  the  Church's 
influence  after  the  Hanoverian  succession,  than  the  dif- 
ferent treatment  shewn  to  Sacheverell  and  Atterbury. 
In  1 7 10  Sacheverell,  who  had  nothing  else  to  recom- 
mend him  than  his  High  Church  views,  which  were 
then  in  favour,  was  made  the  idol  of  the  populace  ; 
and,  in  fact,  was  the  most  popular  man  in  the  king- 
dom. In  1 71 3  Atterbury,  the  advocate  of  the  rights 
of  Convocation,  and  the  opponent  of  Hoadly,  was 
rewarded  with  the  bishopric  of  Rochester  and  the 
deanery  of  Westminster,  He  was  at  that  time  the 
leading  and  most  popular  bishop,  and  was  not  un- 
reasonably marked  out  for  the  primacy ;  but  the 
Hanoverian  succession  put  an  end  to  all  his  hopes. 
In  1722  he  was  committed,   on  slight  foundation, 

'  Lord  Mahon,  i.  493. 


496 


QUEEN  ANNe's  REIGN. 


to  the  Tower,  for  alleged  correspondence  with  the 
Stuarts.  Walpole  induced  Parliament  to  pass  a  bill 
of  pains  and  penalties  against  him  ;  and  his  banish- 
ment for  life,  and  his  death  in  exile  at  Paris  in  1732, 
shew  plainly  how  High  Church  principles,  which  were 
so  strongly  in  vogue  in  the  reign  of  Anne,  had  rapidly 
and  materially  declined. 


CHAPTER  III. 


THE  DEISTS'  AND  THE  UNITARIANS. 

'INHERE  can  be  little  doubt  that  to  the  exaggerated 
principles  of  toleration,  and  the  Latitudinarian- 
ism  of  the  bishops,  the  scepticism  and  infidelity  so 
prevalent  during  the  eighteenth  century  are  mainly 
attributable.  When  we  find  a  bishop  maintaining,  as 
Hoadly  did,  in  direct  contradiction  to  one  of  the 
Articles  ^  that  it  is  unnecessary  to  believe  any  par- 
ticular Creed,  or  to  belong  to  any  particular  Church, 
and  that  a  person's  persuasion  of  the  correctness  of 
his  opinions  is  all  that  is  required ;  and  when  we  find 
such  views  in  favour  at  Court,  and  the  teacher  of 
them  holding  four  bishoprics  in  succession,  we  can- 
not wonder  they  soon  produced  the  natural  fruits 
of  infidelity. 

Following  the  path  mapped  out  by  a  bishop,  people 
began  to  ask.  What  is  truth  how  is  truth  to  be  found  ? 
As  long  as  the  Church  was  acknowledged  to  be  the 
centre  of  unity,  and  Catholicity  the  test  of  orthodoxy, 
the  stand-point  of  Christianity  was  intelligible  *^  enough  ; 
but,  contended  the  Rationalist,  the  venerable  antiquity 

■  The  author  is  indebted  for  much  in  his  remarks  upon  the  Deists 
to  an  excellent  Article  in  the  Quarterly  Review  (vol.  cxv.)  by  the  late 
Dean  Mansel. 

Art.  xviii.  "They  also  are  to  be  accursed  that  presume  to  say  that 
every  man  shall  be  saved  by  the  law  or  sect  which  he  professeth,  so 
that  he  may  be  diligent  to  frame  his  life  according  to  that  law  and  the 
light  of  nature." 

"=  This  is  the  line  adopted  by  Bossuet  in  his  "  Variations  of  Protest- 
ants ;"  the  fallacy  of  his  conclusion  is  evident ;  it  is  a  "petitio  principii," 
making  Romanism  and  Catholicism  equivalent  terms. 

K  k 


498         THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


of  the  Church  was  broken  up  at  the  Reformation ;  the 
Protestant  Church  was  the  result  of  private  judgment ; 
the  Reformers  used  their  "reason"  against  that  of  the 
CathoHc  Church,  and  extracted  a  different  meaning 
from  that  accepted  by  Romanists. 

By  such  arguments  the  supremacy  of  "  reason  "  was 
easily  established,  and  people  claimed,  each  one  for 
himself,  to  put  their  own  interpretation  on  the  Bible. 
Next  came  the  question,  What  is  this  Bible?  how  is 
it  to  be  interpreted  ?  And  soon  arose  out  of  it  the 
further  question.  Who  is  this  Christ  of  whom  the 
Bible  speaks  ? 

The  aphorism  of  Chillingworth,  "  the  Bible,  and  the 
Bible  only,  the  religion  of  Protestants,"  as  advocated 
later  by  Archbishop  Tillotson  ^  and  Tenison,  and  like- 
minded  bishops,  in  not  laying  down  rules  as  to  how 
Scripture  was  to  be  interpreted,  might  easily  lead 
others  into  a  very  different  interpretation  of  the  Bible 
to  that  of  which  they  approved  themselves.  Hooker, 
no  less  than  Chillingworth,  allowed  the  jurisdiction  of 
reason ;  but  he  added  that  the  judgment  of  the  indi- 
vidual ought  to  bow  before  that  of  the  Church,  as  we 
find  it  expressed  in  the  great  councils  and  the  general 
voice  of  ecclesiastical  tradition.  Chillingworth,  on  the 
contrary,  discarded  everything  as  inferior  to  reason  : 
reason  gives  knowledge  ;  faith  only  gives  belief,  which 
is  part  of,  and  therefore  inferior  to,  knowledge ;  it  is 
therefore  by  reason  that  we  must  distinguish  between 
truth  and  falsehood. 

The  Deists,  who  flooded  England  with  their  infidel 
publications  in  the  eighteenth  century,  only  went  one 

Collins,  the  Deist,  actually  speaks  of  Tillotson  as  "one  whom  all 
English  free-thinkers  own  as  their  head."  Whitfield  said  of  him  that 
"  he  knew  no  more  of  true  Christianity  than  Mahomet." 


THE  DEISTS  AND  THE  UNITARIANS. 


499 


Step  further  when,  in  the  exercise  of  their  reason, 
they  asserted  the  sufficiency  of  natural,  and  rejected 
all  revealed,  religion.  The  Deist,  as  the  name  im- 
plies, as  opposed  to  an  Atheist,  believes  in  a  God ; 
neither  the  name  nor  the  opinions  of  Deism  were  new. 
The  name,  as  applied  to  the  opponents  of  revealed  re- 
ligion, existed  in  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century; 
and  Viret,  the  cotemporary  and  friend  of  Calvin,  speaks 
in  his  Instruction  Chretienne,  published  in  1563,  of  per- 
sons who  called  themselves  Deists. 

Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury  (born  1581,  died  1648), 
brother  of  George  Herbert,  may  be  considered  as  the 
father  of  English  Deism.  He  lived  through  the  trou- 
blous times  of  Charles  I.,  and  saw  the  Church  broken 
up  into  various  sects,  each  differing  from  the  other, 
and  each  asserting  that  their  interpretation  of  the 
Bible  was  the  correct  one.  All  these  could  not  pos- 
sibly be  right ;  so  he  sought  a  surer  test,  and  the  only 
sure  test  he  found  was  reason.  He  discarded  all  ex- 
traordinary revelation  as  unnecessary,  and  asserted 
the  sufficiency  and  perfection  of  natural  religion.  This 
natural  religion  he  placed  under  five  heads  :  (i.)  There 
is  a  supreme  God  ;  (2.)  He  is  to  be  worshipped ; 
(3.)  Piety  and  virtue  are  the  necessary  requirements 
for  that  worship  ;  (4.)  Men  must  forsake  their  sins, 
and  then  God  will  pardon  them  ;  (5.)  There  are  re- 
wards and  punishments  for  good  and  bad,  or,  as  he 
sometimes  termed  it,  here  and  hereafter. 

Yet,  though  Lord  Herbert  may  be  considered  as 
the  originator  of  English  Deism,  the  ground  in  more 
recent  times  had  been  prepared  for  it  by  the  reigning 
philosophy  of  the  day,  that  of  Locke.  Though  Locke 
wrote  without  reference  to  theology,  and  probably 
without  any  distinct  thought  of  the  bearing  of  his 

K  k  2 


500        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 

system,  yet  certainly  the  tendency  of  his  teaching  was 
to  make  human  reason  the  measure  and  judge  of  truth. 
It  was  from  the  armoury  of  Locke  that  both  the  Deists 
and  their  later  opponents  borrowed  their  weapons  ; 
thus  the  latter  were  enabled  to  contend  with  the  free- 
thinkers on  their  own  ground,  and  to  employ  Locke's 
philosophy  for  the  purpose  for  which  he  would  him- 
self have  wished  it  to  be  employed  ^. 

The  most  famous  Deists  of  the  eighteenth  century 
are  Toland,  Shaftesbury,  Collins,  Woolston,  Tindal, 
Morgan,  Chubb,  and  Bolingbroke.  Toland  was  born 
in  Ireland  in  1669,  and  was  brought  up  a  Romanist. 
In  1696  he  published  his  principal  work,  "Christianity 
not  Mysterious,"  which  was  burnt  by  order  of  the  Irish 
Parliament  by  the  common  hangman,  one  member  pro- 
posing that  Toland  should  himself  be  burnt.  The 
Lower  House  of  Convocation  was  unanimous  in  con- 
demning the  book,  and  presented  a  prayer  to  the 
Upper  House  for  its  suspension  ;  the  latter,  however, 
took  the  advice  of  the  law  lords,  and  with  the  excep- 
tion of  Compton,  Bishop  of  London,  and  the  Bishops 
of  Exeter  and  Rochester,  rejected  the  petition. 

Shaftesbury,  the  third  Earl  (born  1671,  died  1713), 
grandson  of  the  infamous  member  of  the  Cabal  mi- 
nistry, although  he  is  called  by  Voltaire  the  boldest  of 
all  the  English  Deists,  may  more  properly  be  con- 
sidered a  Rationalist  than  a  Deist.  He  wrote  rather 
for  applause  than  for  truth,  and  in  a  style  calculated 
to  influence  the  upper  classes,  amongst  whom  he  was 
one  of  the  leading  stars,  and  became  the  favourite 
writer  ;  of  his  works,  the  principal  was  "  Characteristics 
of  Men,  Manners,  Opinions,  and  Times  ;"  he  advo- 
cates ridicule  as  the  test  of  religious  truth,  speaks  of 

'  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  cxv. 


THE  DEISTS  AND  THE  UNITARIANS.  50I 

Christianity  as  "  a  witty,  good-humoured  reh'gion,"  and 
treats  it  with  a  Hght  banter ;  and  altogether  his  works 
are  so  mixed  up  with  levity,  as  to  render  it  impossible 
to  pronounce  when  he  is  in  jest  and  when  in  earnest. 

Anthony  Collins  (born  1676,  died  1729)  was  edu- 
cated at  Eton  and  King's  College,  Cambridge,  and 
was  at  one  time  the  intimate  friend  of  Locke,  who  said 
of  him,  that  "  he  has  as  much  love  for  truth,  for  truth's 
sake,"  as  any  man  he  ever  saw ;  but  at  that  time 
he  was  not  the  determined  foe  to  Christianity  that  he 
afterwards  became,  and  it  is  improbable  that  Locke, 
if  he  had  lived,  would  have  pronounced  him  as  a  friend 
either  to  truth  or  to  himself. 

Woolston  (born  1669,  died  1731),  who  had  been 
a  Fellow  of  Sydney  Sussex  College,  Cambridge,  but 
was  deprived  of  his  Fellowship,  was  probably  a  mad- 
man ;  indeed,  he  seems  to  have  considered  himself 
such  ;  although,  at  the  same  time,  he  had  no  mean 
idea  of  his  own  abilities,  for  he  says  he  "will  cut  out 
such  a  piece  of  work  for  the  Boylean  Lectures  as  shall 
hold  them  tug  so  long  as  the  ministry  of  the  letter 
and  a  hireling  priesthood  shall  last  V  He  died  in  the 
Queen's  Bench  prison,  to  which  he  was  committed  for 
his  infidel  writings. 

Tindal  (born  1656,  died  1733),  who,  from  the  con- 
structive character  of  his  writings,  was  called  "  The 
Christian  Deist,"  a  man  of  scandalous  life,  was  a  Fellow 
of  All  Souls,  a  convert  to,  and  revert  from,  Rome.  In 
1730  he  published  his  principal  work,  the  standard 

'  The  Boyle  Lectures  were  founded  in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
century  by  the  Hon.  Robert  Boyle,  seventh  son  of  the  first  Earl  of  Cork, 
for  the  purpose  of  defending  the  Christian  religion  against  Atheists,  Deists, 
Pagans,  Jews,  and  Mahomedans.  Of  these  lectures,  Collins  says,  "  No- 
body doubted  the  existence  of  a  Deity  till  the  Boyle  Lectures  endea- 
voured to  prove  it." 


502  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


work  of  Deism,  entitled,  "Christianity  as  old  as  the 
Creation,"  which,  more  than  any  work  of  the  Deists, 
gave  rise  to  Butler's  Analogy. 

Dr.  Thomas  Morgan,  who,  like  Tindal,  called  him- 
self a  "  Christian  Deist,"  was  a  dissenting  minister. 
Like  Dr.  Colenso,  of  later  date,  he  made  Samuel  to  be 
the  writer  of  the  Book  of  Genesis. 

Chubb  (born  1679,  died  1746)  was  a  tallow-chandler, 
and  a  man  of  no  education,  who  embraced  the  views 
of  Whiston,  and  wrote  some  Tracts,  mostly  on  Arian- 
ism,  which  he  dedicated  to  Bishop  Burnet. 

Bolingbroke  (born  1672,  died  1751)  was  Secretary 
of  State  for  War  in  1 704,  and  for  Foreign  Affairs  in 
1 7 10,  in  which  capacity  he  concluded  the  peace  of 
Utrecht  in  1713,  having  been  raised  to  the  peerage  in 
the  preceding  year ;  he  afterwards  became  Secretary 
of  State  to  the  Pretender,  by  which  his  political  repu- 
tation was  considerably  damaged,  so  that  he  was  com- 
pelled to  leave  the  country,  and  live  in  France,  where 
he  made  the  acquaintance  of  Voltaire.  Bolingbroke 
appeared  on  the  scene  when  Deism  had  been  refuted 
and  practically  worn  out.  He  (unlike  Chubb),  a  bril- 
liant man  of  the  world  himself,  would  adapt  religion  to 
sinners  of  rank  and  fashion,  and  would  impose  no  re- 
straint on  "gentlemanly"  vices;  he  advocated  polyg- 
amy as  "a  reasonable  indulgence,"  whilst  monogamy 
is  "  an  absurd,  unnatural,  and  cruel  imposition."  Bo- 
lingbroke had  given  instructions  to  David  Mallet  for 
the  publication  of  his  works  after  his  death,  which 
brought  down  upon  him  the  virtuous  indignation  of 
Dr.  Johnson.  "Sir,"  said  he,  "he  was  a  scoundrel 
and  a  coward  ;  a  scoundrel  for  charofing  a  blunderbuss 
against  religion  and  morality ;  and  a  coward,  because 
he  had  no  resolution  to  fire  it  off  himself,  but  left 


THE  DEISTS  AND  THE  UNITARIANS. 


half-a-crown  to  a  beggarly  Scotchman  to  draw  the 
trigger  after  his  death." 

The  one  common  object  of  the  Deists  was  to  assert 
the  supremacy  of  reason.  They  looked  for  certainty 
away  from  external  revelation  to  the  internal  revelation 
which  God  has  implanted  in  the  human  soul ;  they 
dwelt  on  the  sufficiency  of  natural  religion  and  the 
improbability  of  any  other,  which  was  intended  to  be 
universal,  being  revealed  only  to  one,  and  that  an  ob- 
scure people ;  on  the  moral  and  textual  difficulties  of 
many  parts  of  the  Bible  ;  on  the  immorality  of  teach- 
ing future  rewards  and  punishments,  as  the  supreme 
incentives  to  a  holy  life ;  they  would  tolerate  nothing 
supernatural  ^  no  miracles  nor  prophecies  ;  they  would 
eliminate  all  dogmatic  teaching,  which  cannot  be  veri- 
fied by  reason,  and  thus  they  would  get  rid  of  Chris- 
tianity altogether. 

The  development  of  Deism  was  gradual,  through 
three  different  phases ;  the  first  of  which  may  be  de- 
scribed as  "  No  dogmatic  Christianity,"  as  taught  by 
Toland  ;  the  second  as  "  No  historical  Christianity,"  as 
taught  by  Chubb  ;  the  third  as  "  No  Christianity  at 
all,"  as  taught  by  Bolingbroke.  Toland  commenced 
with  the  open  denial  of  miracles,  which  was  followed, 
but  in  a  coarser  strain,  by  Collins.  From  mysteries  in 
doctrine,  the  attack  proceeded  to  the  supernatural  in 
fact ;  by  Collins  on  prophecies,  by  Woolston  on  the 
miracles.  And  then,  when  everything  above  reason 
was  eradicated  from  Christian  belief,  then  the  autho- 
rity of  the  teachers  fell  with  the  belief,  and  Christianity 
became,  in  the  hands  of  Tindal  and  Morgan,  a  scheme 
without  any  authority  of  its  own,  and  only  to  be  ac- 

«  Hence,  by  Germans,  Rationalism  is  not  unfrequently  termed  Na- 
turalism. 


504        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


cepted  on  account  of  doctrines  discernible  by  the 
light  of  nature 

Yet,  so  far  from  considering  themselves  the  enemies 
of  religion,  they  threw  the  stigma  of  that  upon  the 
clergy,  and  profess  that  they  only  acted  themselves 
in  the  interests  of  religion,  which  they  disencumbered 
of  the  accretion  of  ages.  Tindal,  in  his  "  Christianity 
as  old  as  the  Creation,"  thinks  that  he  has  "laid  down 
such  plain  and  evident  rules,  as  may  enable  men  of  the 
meanest  capacity  to  distinguish  between  religion  and 
superstition  ;  and  has  represented  the  former  in  every 
part  so  beautiful,  so  amiable,  and  so  strongly  affecting, 
that  they  who  in  the  least  reflect,  must  be  highly  in 
love  with  it."  So  Chubb,  in  his  "  Preface  to  the 
true  Gospel,"  says,  that  he  has  "rendered  the  Gospel 
of  Christ  defendable  upon  rational  principles."  And 
again,  the  same  writer,  in  the  "  Defence  of  his  Dis- 
courses on  the  Miracles:"  "Where's  the  sense  and 
reason  of  imposing  parochial  priests  upon  the  people 
to  take  care  of  their  souls,  more  than  parochial  lawyers 
to  look  to  their  estates,  or  parochial  physicians  to  at- 
tend to  their  bodies,  or  parochial  tinkers  to  mend 
their  kettles." 

When  we  consider  the  great  popularity  that  at- 
tended their  writings,  we  may  form  some  idea  of  the 
mischief  which  Deism  must  have  spread  throughout 
the  country.  Woolston's  Discourses  are  said  to  have 
sold  to  the  extent  of  thirty  thousand,  and  to  have 
called  forth  in  a  short  time  sixty  replies.  Against 
Collins'  "Discourse  of  Free-thinking,"  thirty-four  works 
are  said  to  have  been  published  in  England  alone,  and 
the  number  in  various  languages  to  have  amounted  in 
all  to  seventy-nine ;  whilst  Tindal's  "  Christianity  as 
Quarterly  Review,  cxv.  80. 


THE  DEISTS  AND  THE  UNITARIANS.  505 


old  as  the  Creation,"  called  forth  no  fewer  than  one 
hundred  and  fifteen  replies 

During  the  reign  of  Deism,  the  Church  did  its  work 
well  and  effectually.  Of  the  numerous  works  pub- 
lished in  defence  of  Christianity,  the  principal  were  : 
Sherlock's  "Trial  of  the  Witnesses  of  the  Resurrection 
of  Jesus,"  Conybeare's  "  Defence  of  Revealed  Reli- 
gion," Berkeley's  "  Minute  Philosopher,"  and  Warbur- 
ton's  "Divine  Legation  of  Moses  ;"  whilst,  amongst  the 
lesser  luminaries,  must  be  mentioned,  Leslie,  Sykes, 
Balguy,  and  Stebbing.  But,  far  surpassing  all,  was 
a  work  published  in  1736,  the  result  of  twenty  years' 
labours,  and  those  twenty  years  spent  at  the  very  time 
when  Deism  was  at  its  height,  a  work  which  struck 
at  the  very  root  of  infidelity,  the  immortal  Analogy  of 
Bishop  Butler.  Thanks  to  these  champions  of  the 
faith,  the  Deism  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  com- 
pletely overcome.  It,  however,  thanks  to  the  pa- 
tronage it  received  from  the  State,  lingered  on  for 
a  time ;  it  revived  later  in  the  century,  in  the  works  of 
Hume  and  Gibbon,  both  of  whom  received  lucrative 
appointments  under  government ;  Paine's  "  Age  of 
Reason"  widely  diffused  its  poison  through  the  lower 
classes ;  and  it  was  not  finally  driven  from  the  country 
till  the  "Evangelical"  movement,  which  took  its  rise 
at  the  end  of  the  century.  "  We,  too,  in  England," 
says  Burke,  "  have  had  writers  who  made  some  noise 
in  their  day,  but  they  now  repose  in  oblivion.  Who, 
born  in  the  last  forty  years,  has  read  one  word  of 
Collins,  Toland,  or  Tindal,  or  Morgan,  who  called 
themselves  Free-thinkers  ?" 

In  an  age  so  opposed  as  the  eighteenth  century  was 
to  everything  like  mysticism,  it  is  not  surprising  that 

'  Quarterly  Review,  cxv.  60. 


506        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 

controversies  arose  on  the  subject  of  the  Divine  na- 
ture of  our  Lord.  Heretical  opinions  respecting  the 
Person  of  Christ  are  almost  as  old  as  Christianity  it- 
self, having  been  held  by  the  Ebionites  and  Cerin- 
thians  in  the  days  of  the  Apostles,  by  the  Monarchians 
in  the  middle  of  the  second  century,  and  the  Sabellians 
in  the  middle  of  the  third.  In  the  fourth  century  the 
heresy  passed,  with  several  divergencies,  into  Arianism, 
and  was  condemned  by  the  four  General  Councils.  In 
the  sixteenth  century,  being  revived  by  an  uncle  and 
nephew,  Lselius  and  Faustus  Socinus,  it  took  from 
them  the  name  of  Socinianism  ;  in  Switzerland,  in  1553, 
Servetus  was  burnt  for  holding  the  heresy ;  and  about 
the  middle  of  that  century  if  made  its  appearance  in 
England,  when  Joan  Bocher,  and  a  Dutchman,  Van 
Parris,  were  burnt  under  Edward  VI.,  two  others 
being  burnt  under  James  I.  In  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury it  exercised  considerable  influence,  and  its  ad- 
herents were  so  numerous,  that  Dr.  Owen,  writing  in 
1665,  says,  "there  is  not  a  city,  a  town,  and  scarcely 
a  village  in  England,  where  some  of  the  poison  is  not 
poured  forth."  Shortly  before  that  time,  John  Bidle 
formed  the  society  of  those  holding  heretical  opinions 
on  the  Trinity,  who  after  him  were  called  Bidellians. 
In  1645  he  was  imprisoned  for  his  heretical  opinions, 
and  in  1648  condemned  to  death  by  the  Westminster 
Divines  ;  but  the  army,  less  cruel  than  the  Church,  pre- 
vented the  sentence  from  being  carried  out.  Under 
Cromwell  he  was  released  from  prison,  but  he  soon 
again  got  into  trouble ;  his  doctrine  was  so  obnoxious, 
that  his  books  (amongst  which  was  a  translation  of  the 
Racovian  Catechism'')  were  condemned  to  be  burnt, 
and  in  order  to  save  his  life,  the  Protector  was  com- 

''  The  standard  of  Socinian  doctrines,  first  drawn  up  in  1605. 


THE  DEISTS  AND  THE   UNITARIANS.  507 

pelled  to  banish  him  to  the  Scilly  Islands  ;  at  the 
Restoration  he  was  again  apprehended  and  thrown 
into  prison,  where  he  died  in  1662. 

Unitarianism,  the  development  of  the  theology  of 
the  intellectual  Puritans,  of  which  Milton  was  a  con- 
spicuous example,  dates  from  the  eight  hundred  Puri- 
tans who  were  ejected  from  their  benefices  on  St.  Bar- 
tholomew's-day,  a.d.  1662.  At  that  time  the  two  most 
learned  and  most  important  sects  of  Puritans  were  the 
Presbyterians  and  the  Independents  ;  the  Independ- 
ents, in  their  early  days,  being  the  advocates  of  tolera- 
tion, whilst  the  Presbyterians  would  persecute  all  that 
differed  from  their  own  form  of  Church  government. 
For  a  time,  after  their  separation  from  the  Church, 
the  two  sects  agreed  to  work  together,  and  had  one 
united  congregation,  and  the  same  meeting  -  house. 
But  their  divergencies  soon  became  manifest ;  the  In- 
dependents grew  less  tolerant,  and  would  hold  commu- 
nion with  none  but  Calvinists  :  the  Presbyterians,  on 
the  other  hand,  grew  less  intolerant ;  to  a  great  extent 
they  gave  over  Calvinism,  and  refused  to  be  bound  by 
Creeds,  or  any  other  authority  than  their  own  inter- 
pretation of  the  Bible.  This  change  became  more  and 
more  marked  ;  till  they  adopted  those  Unitarian  views, 
which  called  forth  from  Dr.  Bull,  in  1685,  his  famous 
Defence  of  the  Nicene  Creed,  for  which  he  received 
a  vote  of  thanks  from  the  French  bishops,  headed 
by  Bossuet. 

The  Act  of  Toleration  did  not  extend  the  liberty  it 
allowed  to  other  Dissenters,  to  Romanists,  or  those 
who  denied  the  Trinity  ;  so  that  for  some  time  the 
number  of  the  Unitarians  was  small.  Their  growth 
was  due  to  Thomas  Firmin  (born  1632,  died  1697), 
a  rich  linen-draper  in  London,  a  friend  not  only  of 


508        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


Biddle,  but  of  Tillotson,  and  other  leading  divines  of 
the  day,  a  man  of  most  unbounded  charity,  who,  at 
the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  devoted  a  large 
sum  of  money  to  the  circulation  of  anti-Trinitarian 
publications. 

A  controversy  on  the  subject  of  Unitarianism  ori- 
ginated in  1 719  in  the  west  of  England,  and  two  Pres- 
byterian ministers,  on  account  of  their  holding  anti- 
Trinitarian  doctrines,  were  deposed  from  their  pas- 
toral charges.  But  in  time  the  Presbyterians  became 
thoroughly  impregnated  with  those  doctrines,  and  the 
Presbyterian  chapels  and  endowments  in  a  great  de- 
gree the  property  of  the  Unitarians,  whose  origin,  as 
a  distinct  communion  in  England,  may  be  dated  from 
the  period  just  subsequent  to  1730^ 

Unitarianism  had  come  into  great  prominence  at  the 
end  of  the  seventeenth,  and  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
centuries.  Whiston,  Professor  of  Mathematics  at 
Cambridge,  and  one  of  the  most  learned  theologians 
of  the  day,  openly  professed  Arianism.  Dr.  Samuel 
Clarke,  Rector  of  St.  James',  Westminster,  and  one  of 
the  royal  chaplains,  who  had  twice  been  Boyle  Lec- 
turer, fell  into  the  heresy,  and  only  escaped  the  cen- 
sure of  Convocation  by  retracting  his  statements.  The 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  in  that  age  of  controversies  be- 
came one  of  the  chief  subjects  of  the  Church's  politics  ; 
in  it  Tillotson,  Jane,  Sherlock,  Burnet,  South,  and 
many  others  took  part ;  it  was  greatly  favoured  by  the 
suppression  of  Convocation  ;  and  heretical  opinions  on 
the  subject  were  attributed  to  the  bishops ;  Hoadly, 
and  later.  Law,  Bishop  of  Carlisle,  were  charged  with 
it.  Rundle,  a  friend  of  Whiston  and  Clarke,  was  sus- 
pected of  it,  and  through  the  representation  of  Gibson, 

'  Hook's  Church  Dictionary. 


THE  DEISTS  AND  THE  UNITARIANS. 


Bishop  of  London,  was  prevented  from  obtaining  the 
bishopric  of  Gloucester.  Clayton,  for  nearly  thirty 
years  Bishop  of  Clogher,  openly  attacked  the  Atha- 
nasian  and  Nicene  Creeds  ;  and  in  1756  moved,  in  the 
Irish  House  of  Lords,  for  their  expungement  from  the 
Prayer-Book  ;  proceedings  were  in  consequence  com- 
menced against  him,  but  on  the  very  day,  in  1758,  on 
which  they  commenced,  he  died. 

Accompanying  the  controversy  was  a  strong  ob- 
jection to  compulsory  conformity,  and  signing  the 
Thirty-nine  Articles.  It  was  contended  that  these 
Articles  were  decidedly  Calvinistic ;  and  that  as  most 
of  the  clergy  who  signed  them  were  Arminians  sub- 
scription was  an  unmeaning  form,  and  might  quite  as 
properly  be  made  by  Arians.  Whiston,  on  account 
of  his  Arian  principles,  had  lost  his  professorship  at 
Cambridge.  Clarke  refused  a  bishopric,  because  he 
was  unwilling  to  sign  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  :  (he, 
however,  did  not  scruple  to  retain  the  rectory  of  St. 
James').  Middleton,  at  the  very  time  he  was  signing 
the  Articles  as  a  preliminary  to  taking  a  living,  wrote 
in  1 736  :  "  though  there  are  many  things  in  the  Church 
which  I  wholly  dislike,  yet  whilst  I  am  content  to  ac- 
quiesce in  the  ill,  I  should  be  glad  to  taste  a  little  of 
the  good,  and  to  have  some  amends  for  that  ugly 
assent  and  consent  which  no  man  of  sense  can  ap- 
prove of 

In  the  great  Trinitarian  controversy  at  the  end  of 
the  century,  in  which  Priestley  and  Horsley  were  the 
prominent  actors,  this  objection  to  signing  was  one 

Paley,  in  his  defence  of  the  "  Feathers'  Tavern  Petition,"  states  that 
the  only  persons  at  the  time  who  beheved  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  were 
the  Methodists,  who  were  refused  ordination  by  the  bishops. 
°  Nicholl's  Lit.  Anecd.  of  the  Eighteenth  Century. 


5IO         THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


of  the  most  prominent  features.    In  1766,  Blackburne, 
Archdeacon  of  Clevedon,  published  his  "Confessional," 
in  which  he  advocated  the  maxim  of  Chillingworth, 
"  The  Bible,  and  the  Bible  only,  the  religion  of  Pro- 
testants ;"  and  contended  that  the  Church  has  no 
right  to  demand  any  other  subscription  than  a  con- 
formity to  the  Bible.    If  Blackburne  was  not  himself 
a  Unitarian,  he  was  very  near  one  ;  he  was  decidedly 
a  Calvinist ;   he  confessed  his  belief  that  many  doc- 
trines of  the  English  Church  were  objectionable  ;  yet 
he  did  not  resign  his  appointments.    Let  us  hear  his 
own  reason, — he  had  "  a  wife  and  children  ;"  he  talked 
about  the  jargon  of  the  Athanasian  Creed,  and  refused 
to  read  it ;  or  again  sign  the  Thirty-nine  Articles. 
His  son-in-law,  Theophilus  Lindsey,  Vicar  of  Cat- 
terick,  travelled  through  Yorkshire,  trying  to  get  up 
petitions  against  subscription,  but  he  met  with  little 
success.    The  only  effect  of  the  agitation  was  a  "  Pe- 
tition," drawn  up  by  an  association  of  two  hundred 
and  fifty  persons,  clergy  as  well  as  laity,  at  a  meeting 
held  at  the  Feathers'  Tavern  in  the  Strand,  and  pre- 
sented to  the  House  of  Commons  in  1772,  embodying 
the  proposal  made  in  the  "  Confessional "  of  subscrip- 
tion to  the  Scriptures  instead  of  to  the  Articles.  Burke 
spoke  in  the  House  of  the  grievance  as  being  infini- 
tesimal;  the  petition  was  rejected  by  217  to  71,  and 
when  introduced  again  in  the  following  year,  by  159 
to  67.    Lindsey,  seeing  no  hope  of  a  change  being 
made,  avowed  himself  a  Unitarian,  and  resigned  his 
living.    The  law  which  made  the  denial  of  the  Tri- 
nity punishable,  though  not  enforced,  still  existed ; 
there  was  no  licensed  place  for  Unitarian  worship ; 
so  Lindsey,  leaving  Catterick,  went  to  London,  where, 
in  Essex-street,  Strand,  he  opened  the  first  Unitarian 


THE  DEISTS  AND  THE  UNITARIANS. 


chapel,  where  he  continued  to  preach  till  his  death 
in  1808. 

The  subscription  controversy  led  to  more  open  at- 
tacks upon  the  Trinity.  In  1782,  Dr.  Priestley,  a  well- 
known  natural  philosopher,  who,  according  to  his  own 
confession,  "came  to  embrace  what  is  called  the  he- 
terodox side  of  every  question ; "  a  man,  by  birth 
a  Calvinist,  then  an  Arminian,  and  eventually  a  So- 
cinian,  published  a  work  entitled  "  the  Corruptions 
of  Christianity ; "  which  brought  him  in  contact  with 
Dr.  Horsley,  Archdeacon  of  St.  Albans,  and  led  to 
the  greatest  controversy  of  the  latter  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  In  a  charge  to  the  clergy  of  his 
archdeaconry  in  1783,  the  archdeacon  severely  criti- 
cized the  prominent  defects  and  errors  of  the  work,  as 
being  nothing  short  of  an  attack  upon  the  Creeds,  and 
established  discipline  of  every  Church  in  Christen- 
dom. He  thus  sums  up  the  scope  of  the  book  :  "  The 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  in  the  form  in  which  it  is  now 
maintained,  is  no  older  than  the  Nicene  Council,  the 
result  of  a  gradual  corruption  of  the  Gospel,  which 
took  its  rise  in  an  opinion  first  advanced  in  the  second 
century  by  certain  converts  in  the  Platonic  school, 
who,  by  expounding  the  beginning  of  St.  John's  Gos- 
pel by  the  Platonic  doctrine  of  the  Logos,  ascribed 
a  sort  of  secondary  divinity  to  our  Saviour,  affirming 
that  He  was  no  other  than  the  Second  Person  in  the 
Platonic  Triad,  who  had  assumed  a  human  body  to 
converse  with  men.  Before  this  innovation,  of  which 
Justin  Martyr  is  made  the  author,  the  faith  of  the 
whole  Christian  Church,  but  especially  the  Church  of 
Jerusalem,  was  simply  and  strictly  Unitarian.  The  im- 
mediate disciples  conceived  our  Saviour  to  be  a  Man, 
whose  existence  commenced  in  the  womb  of  the  Vir- 


512         THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


gin,  and  they  thought  Him  in  no  respect  an  object  of 
worship.  The  next  succeeding  race  worshipped  Him 
indeed,  but  had  no  higher  notions  of  His  divinity 
than  those  which  were  maintained  by  the  followers 
of  Arius  in  the  fourth  century." 

Pamphlets  and  counter-pamphlets  were  published 
by  each  of  the  litigants,  in  which  much  warmth  was 
displayed  on  both  sides  ;  in  one  of  these,  Priestley  talks 
of  his  antagonist  as  "  this  incorrigible  dignitary."  Ul- 
timately, however,  Horsley  entirely  succeeded  in  de- 
stroying his  credit  as  a  scholar  and  a  theologian,  by 
exposing  manifest  errors  and  ignorance,  and  proving 
his  unfitness  to  write  on  such  a  subject. 

The  triumph  of  Horsley  was  complete.  Priestley's 
opinions  were  not  received  with  favour  even  in  his 
own  country.  In  Birmingham,  where  he  had  exer- 
cised his  ministry  from  1781  to  1791,  he  was  stig- 
matized as  a  revolutionist,  and  an  enemy  to  order 
and  religion  ;  in  the  latter  year  the  memorable  "  Bir- 
mingham Riots  "  occurred ;  Priestley's  chapel  and  his 
private  house  were  destroyed,  and,  in  danger  of  his 
life,  he  fled  from  Birmingham  to  London ;  but,  find- 
ing himself  no  better  off  there,  in  1794  he  emigrated 
to  America,  where  he  died  in  1804. 

Horsley,  on  the  other  hand,  was  rewarded  in  1788 
with  the  bishopric  of  St.  David's  ;  from  whence,  in 
1793,  he  was  translated  to  Rochester,  and,  in  1802, 
to  St.  Asaph. 

To  Bishop  Horsley  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth, 
as  to  Bishop  Bull  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth,  cen- 
tury, the  Church  is  indebted  for  the  suppression  of 
these  heretical  opinions.  The  Unitarians  profess  to 
ground  their  religion  on  reason  and  common-sense ; 
but  though  Presbyterianism  has  dwindled  into  Uni- 


THE  DEISTS  AND  THE  UNITARIANS.  513 

tarianism  as  the  last  stage  in  the  downward  path  of 
heresy,  they  have  never  in  England  been  an  im- 
portant sect,  or  secured  a  firm  hold  in  any  part  of 
the  empire  °. 

•  "  Humanitarianism"  would  be  a  more  applicable  name  to  the  heresy  : 
for  the  Catholic  Church,  which  is  "  Trinitarian  "  in  one  sense  as  holding 
the  belief  in  Three  Persons,  is  equally  "  Unitarian  "  on  the  other,  as  hold- 
ing that  there  is  only  One  God. 


l1 


CHAPTER  IV. 


THE  METHODISTS. 


T  the  time  that  the  controversy  with  the  Deists 


was  at  its  height,  the  Church  entered  upon  a  more 
inglorious  contest  with  the  Methodists.  The  Method- 
ists, feeling  the  stirring  of  those  truths  which  the 
Deists  had  denied,  set  themselves  to  stemming  the 
infidelity,  and  immorality,  and  coldness  of  the  day. 
They  strove  manfully  and,  to  a  certain  extent  success- 
fully, against  the  prevailing  corruptions ;  but  they  were 
enthusiasts,  and  at  that  time  enthusiasm  in  religion 
brought  back  the  memory  of  Puritanism,  and  was  re- 
garded as  an  unmitigated  evil.  The  bishops,  as  a 
body,  although  they  saw  and  owned  the  Church's 
shortcomings,  stigmatized  the  Methodists  as  Antino- 
mians ;  some  of  them,  as  Warburton  and  Lavington, 
assailed  Wesley  with  the  coarsest  invectives ;  whilst 
his  followers  not  unfrequently  were  accused  of  being 
Deists  and  Papists. 

Of  this  great  movement  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
one  man,  John  Wesley,  was  the  life  and  guiding  spirit ; 
and  it  is  in  the  history  of  his  life  that  we  shall  find  also 
the  history  and  character  of  the  work. 

John  Wesley,  the  second  of  three  brothers,  was 
born  at  Epworth,  in  Lincolnshire,  in  1703,  five  years 
before  his  brother  Charles.  His  father  (although  his 
family  were  Puritans,  and  he  himself  had  been  in  the 
number  of  those  who  seceded  in  1662,)  was  a  High 
Churchman,  Rector  of  Epworth,  and  a  man  of  con- 
siderable reputation  ;  he  was  Proctor  in  Convocation 


THE  METHODISTS. 


for  the  diocese  of  Lincoln,  and  probably  bore  part  in 
the  controversy  between  the  two  houses,  which  led  to 
their  suppression  :  John  Wesley's  mother  was  a  daugh- 
ter of  Dr.  Annesley,  an  eminent  Nonconformist  min- 
ister. When  he  was  only  five  years  old,  the  rectory 
of  Epworth  was  burnt  to  the  ground,  and  John  Wesley 
was  only  saved  at  the  last  moment.  After  being  edu- 
cated at  the  Charterhouse,  he  proceeded,  at  seventeen 
years  of  age,  to  Christ  Church,  Oxford ;  and  at  the 
age  of  twenty-five  was  elected  (although  under  some 
opposition  on  account  of  his  opinions)  Fellow  of  Lin- 
coln College  ;  his  brother  Charles  having,  in  the  mean- 
time, proceeded  from  Westminster  on  a  Studentship  to 
Christ  Church.  At  Oxford,  his  favourite  studies  were, 
Thomas  a  Kempis'  "  Imitation  of  Christ,"  Jeremy 
Taylor's  "  Holy  Living  and  Dying,"  and  above  all, 
William  Law's  "  Serious  Call ;"  to  which  last  work 
he  attributes  the  religious  revival  which  bears  his 
name  \  After  taking  deacon's  orders,  he  became  his 
father's  curate  for  two  years,  when  he  returned  to 
Oxford,  to  find  the  work  which  was  afterwards  so 
thoroughly  identified  with  himself,  already  commenced 
by  his  brother  Charles. 

Under  Charles  Wesley,  about  1729,  a  small  society 
of  Undergraduates,  consisting  of  himself,  Morgan  of 
Christ  Church,  and  Kirkman  of  Merton,  to  whom  later 
were  added  Whitfield ;  Hervey,  author  of  "  Theron 
and  Aspasio,"  (who  afterwards  embraced  Calvinistic 
opinions) ;  Gambold,  later  a  Moravian  bishop  ;  Clay- 

•  "William  Law,"  says  Bishop  Warburton,  "begot  Methodism;"  it 
thus  appears  that  a  Non-juror  and  a  High  Churchman  was  the  originator 
of  Methodism. 

To  this  book  Dr.  Johnson  also  attributes  his  first  religious  impres- 
sions, and  it  was  honoured  by  the  approval  of  even  Gibbon. 

l1  2 


5l6        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 

ton,  afterwards  a  zealous  High  Churchman  ;  and  se- 
veral others  (three  of  whom  relapsed  into  sin  and  in- 
fidelity), were  induced  to  assemble  in  each  other's 
rooms  for  the  purpose  of  prayer  and  study,  more 
especially  the  study  of  the  Greek  Testament.  They 
bound  themselves  to  abstain  from  the  prevalent  amuse- 
ments and  luxuries  of  the  University ;  to  fast  on 
Wednesdays  and  Fridays,  and  during  Lent ;  to  re- 
ceive the  Holy  Eucharist  every  week  at  St.  Mary's ; 
and  to  visit  the  prisoners  in  the  gaols,  and  the  poor 
in  the  workhouses ;  and  from  their  professing  thus 
lo  live  by  rule,  the  nickname  of  Methodists  was  ap- 
plied to  them.  So  that  Charles  Wesley,  the  "  sweet 
singer"  of  the  movement,  was  the  founder  of  the 
Methodists,  although  John,  from  his  age,  his  charac- 
ter for  learning,  and  his  position  in  the  University  as 
Fellow  of  his  college,  naturally  became  their  leader. 

On  the  death  of  his  father  in  1735,  he  was  offered, 
but  refused,  the  living  of  Epworth,  although  it  was  his 
father's  dying  request  that  he  should  accept  it  as 
a  means  of  maintaining  his  mother  and  sisters.  The 
same  year  he  was  offered,  through  Dr.  Burton,  Presi- 
dent of  Corpus,  and  accepted,  the  appointment  of 
missionary  under  the  S.  P.  G.  in  the  colony  of  Georgia, 
which  had  been  founded  only  two  years  before,  and  of 
which  General  Oglethorpe  was  appointed  the  first 
Governor.  We  must  here  make  a  short  digression,  in 
order  to  say  a  few  words  regarding  General  Ogle- 
thorpe, who,  standing  as  he  does  conspicuous  as  one 
of  the  few  philanthropists  of  that  time,  deserves  more 
than  a  passing  notice. 

The  mismanagement  of  the  prisons,  and  the  great 
number  of  executions  for  comparatively  trifling  of- 
fences, were  amongst  the  crying  evils  of  the  century. 


THE  METHODISTS. 


In  1732,  no  fewer  than  seventy-two  persons  received 
sentence  of  death  at  the  Old  Bailey ;  and  in  the  same 
year,  eighteen  persons  were  executed  at  Cork  in  one 
day.  But  the  treatment  of  the  prisoners,  more  espe- 
cially the  insolvent  debtors,  was  a  disgrace  to  civi- 
lization. In  1729,  Oglethorpe  succeeded  in  obtaining 
a  parliamentary  enquiry  into  the  condition  of  the  Fleet 
and  the  Marshalsea  :  the  enquiry  was  afterwards  ex- 
tended to  other  prisons,  and  the  state  of  things  brought 
to  light  excited  universal  indignation.  Oglethorpe 
did  what  he  could  to  remedy  these  abuses,  but  with 
only  slight  success.  Nearly  forty  years  later,  the  phi- 
lanthropist Howard  found  the  same  frightful  abuses  ; 
the  prisons  crowded  by  the  cruel  legislation  of  the 
day ;  debtors  and  felons  huddled  together  in  one  com- 
mon cell ;  no  separation  between  the  sexes ;  every 
gaol  a  chaos  of  the  foulest  immorality  ;  prisoners,  even 
when  acquitted,  dragged  back  to  their  cells,  because 
they  were  unable  to  pay  the  extortionate  fees  of  their 
gaolers,  and  left  there  either  to  starve  or  to  die  from 
the  gaol-fever,  which  infested  those  haunts  of  misery. 
Oglethorpe  devised  the  idea  of  founding  a  colony, 
where  debtors,  after  their  liberation  from  prison,  might 
find  a  refuge.  A  charter  was  obtained  in  1732,  and 
the  next  year  the  colony  of  Georgia  was  founded  for 
that  purpose,  Oglethorpe  being  appointed  Governor. 

It  was  in  this  colony  that  Wesley  thought  he  saw 
an  opening  as  missionary ;  and,  in  company  with  his 
brother  Charles,  left  England  for  Georgia  in  October, 
1735.  In  his  voyage  out  he,  for  the  first  time,  came 
in  contact  with  the  Moravians,  who  so  deeply  in- 
fluenced his  after-life.  The  colonists  belonged  to 
many  nationalities,  and  spoke  many  languages  :  Wes- 
ley worked  hard  among  them,  and  it  was  no  small  merit 


5l8         THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


to  his  ability  and  energy,  that,  in  addition  to  his  Eng- 
lish services,  he  conducted  also  services  in  French, 
German,  and  Italian.  But  his  mission  to  Georgia  was 
a  lamentable  failure ;  and  if  we  may  judge  from  the 
success  that  afterwards  attended  Whitfield  in  the  same 
colony,  his  failure  was  mainly  due  to  his  temper  and 
indiscretion.  Wesley  was  not  an  amiable  man,  nor 
at  that  period  was  he  a  discreet  one.  The  people 
were  startled  at  the  novelties  which  he  abruptly  intro- 
duced, of  which  they  could  not  understand  the  mean- 
ing. He  insisted  on  Baptism  by  immersion,  refused 
to  say  the  Burial  Service  over  a  dissenter,  insisted 
on  re-baptizing  those  who  had  been  baptized  by  dis- 
senters, and  divided  the  Church  services.  He  was 
hard  and  domineering ;  he  was  accused  of  prying  into 
the  secrets  of  every  family;  all  the  quarrels  which  took 
place  in  the  colony  were  attributed  to  his  intermed- 
dling ;  and  not  a  very  creditable  law-suit,  in  which  he 
was  involved,  made  the  place  too  hot  for  him,  so  by 
the  advice  of  his  friends  he  left  the  colony  in  1738 
(his  brother  Charles  having  left  before),  shaking  off 
the  dust  from  his  feet ;  and  arrived  in  England  just 
a  few  days  after  Whitfield  had  set  out  from  England 
for  Georgia. 

On  his  arrival  in  London,  being  tortured  by  doubts 
as  to  the  reality  of  his  faith,  he  made  the  acquaintance 
of  Peter  Bohler,  a  Moravian  minister,  who  obtained 
a  complete  ascendancy  over  him ;  from  him  he  ac- 
quired the  belief  that  every  one  is  in  a  state  of  dam- 
nation until,  by  an  instantaneous  process,  the  super- 
natural conviction  flashes  on  him  that  his  sins  are 
forgiven,  and  he  has  a  personal  and  absolute  assur- 
ance of  forgiveness.  In  his  Journal  he  minutely  fol- 
lows out  the  process  of  his  own  case.    In  the  after- 


THE  METHODISTS. 


noon  of  May  24,  1738,  he  went  in  a  state  of  great 
depression  to  St.  Paul's.  On  the  evening  of  the  same 
day  he  reluctantly  went  to  a  meeting  in  Aldersgate- 
street,  where  some  one  was  reading  Luther's  Preface 
to  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans.  "About  a  quarter 
before  nine,"  he  writes,  "  I  felt  my  heart  strangely 
warmed  :  I  felt  I  did  trust  in  Christ,  and  Christ  alone 
for  salvation,  and  an  assurance  was  given  me  that  He 
had  taken  away  my  sins,  even  mine,  and  saved  me 
from  the  law  of  sin  and  death  ^" 

Wesley  seems,  however,  still  to  have  entertained 
doubts  as  to  his  state,  so  he  determined  on  making 
a  visit  to  the  head-quarters  of  Moravianism  at  Hern- 
hut,  where  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  the  great 
patron  of  the  Moravians,  Count  Zinzendorf ;  he  re- 
turned to  England  strengthened  indeed  in  his  opi- 
nions, but  for  some  reason  or  another  dissatisfied  with 
Moravianism,  of  which  Methodism  hitherto  had  been 
little  more  than  an  offshoot.  Zinzendorf,  on  a  visit 
to  England,  tried  to  effect  a  reconciliation  between 
his  followers  and  Wesley ;  but  the  breach  was  only 
widened,  and  although  their  views  materially  affected 
all  his  opinions,  in  1740  Wesley  solemnly  separated 
himself  from  the  Moravians. 

But  before  these  events  happened,  George  Whit- 
field, another  of  the  little  Oxford  brotherhood,  was 
electrifying  England  by  his  preaching.  Whitfield  was 
born  at  the  "Bull  Inn,"  Gloucester,  on  December  16, 
1 714,  which  was  then  kept  by  his  mother,  and  in  which 
he  for  some  time  served  as  waiter.  Having  been  edu- 
cated in  the  grammar-school  of  that  city,  he  entered, 
in  his  eighteenth  year,  as  a  servitor  at  Pembroke  Col- 
lege, Oxford ;  and  having  through  his  personal  cha- 


"  Journal,  1738. 


520         THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA, 


racter  and  zeal  in  visiting  the  sick  and  prisoners  in 
Gloucester,  attracted  the  attention  of  Dr.  Benson, 
bishop  of  the  diocese,  was  ordained  by  him  at  the  age 
of  twenty-one  years.  His  first  sermon  was  preached 
at  Gloucester  ;  and  the  sermon  was  so  different  to 
what  people  were  at  that  time  accustomed,  that  a 
complaint  was  made  to  the  bishop  that  it  had  driven 
some  people  mad.  The  bishop  replied,  he  "  wished 
the  madness  might  not  be  forgotten  till  the  follow- 
ing Sunday."  The  sermon  is  in  print,  and  would  now- 
a-days  be  considered  a  temperate,  almost  a  tame, 
production. 

Whitfield  was  not  a  learned  man  ;  but  the  manner 
of  his  preaching,  such  as  England  had  never  heard 
before,  theatrical,  often  common-place,  but  exhibiting 
the  most  intense  earnestness  of  belief,  combined  with 
the  deepest  feeling  for  the  sin  and  sorrow  of  his  fellow- 
creatures  ;  his  powerful  voice,  which  Franklyn  said 
could  easily  be  heard  by  a  congregation  of  30,000, 
and  soft  as  music  ;  the  manner  of  his  delivery  ;  at  once 
marked  him  out  as  the  first  pulpit  orator  of  the  day. 
It  was  no  common  enthusiast  who  could  extort  admi- 
ration from  the  cold  infidelity  of  Hume ;  could  wring 
gold  from  the  close-fisted  Franklyn"^;  or  admiration 
from  the  fastidious  Horace  Walpole  ^ ;  or  who  in  Glou- 
cester, Bristol,  and  London,  could  attract  such  crowded 
congregations  as  no  other  preacher  is  ever  known  to 
have  brought  together.    In  1738,  as  we  have  seen,  he 

"  I  had  in  my  pocket,''  wTites  Franklyn  (who  had  resolved  to  give 
nothing)  in  his  Autobiography,  "a  handful  of  copper  money,  three  or 
four  silver  dollars,  and  five  pistoles  in  gold.  As  he  proceeded,  I  began 
to  soften,  and  concluded  to  give  the  copper.  Another  stroke  of  his 
oratory  made  me  ashamed  of  that,  and  determined  me  to  give  the 
silver :  and  he  finished  so  admirably,  that  I  emptied  my  pocket  wholly 
into  the  collector's  dish,  gold  and  all." 
'  Green's  History  of  the  English  People. 


THE  METHODISTS. 


was  induced  to  go  to  America,  and,  unlike  Wesley, 
met  with  great  success  there  ;  but  shortly  afterwards 
he  was  obliged  to  return  to  England  to  take  his 
Priest's  orders,  and  to  collect  funds  for  an  orphanage 
in  Georgia. 

Another  digression  must  here  be  allowed,  in  order 
that  we  may  explain  the  necessity  which  caused  Whit- 
field to  come  all  the  way  from  America  to  receive 
Priest's  orders. 

Although  remonstrances  and  most  touching  peti- 
tions were  constantly  flowing  in  from  America,  no 
bishop,  till  1784,  was  ever  consecrated  to  the  North 
American  continent.  Laud  had  advocated  a  plan, 
but  it  was  defeated  by  the  breaking  out  of  the  civil 
war ;  Clarendon  was  frustrated  by  the  Cabal ;  nothing 
was  done  in  James  the  Second's  reign ;  William  was 
no  friend  to  episcopacy ;  when  arrangements  were 
nearly  completed,  they  were  stopped  by  the  death  of 
Anne ;  and  Walpole  was  opposed  to  Jacobite  bishops, 
and  cultivated  the  growing  dissenting  interest  ^  From 
such  causes  the  people  in  North  America  went  with- 
out Confirmation  ;  and  those  who  desired  Ordination 
were  obliged  to  travel  3,000  miles  to  be  ordained  by 
the  Bishop  of  London,  Soon  after  the  accession  of 
George  IIL,  Archbishop  Seeker  had  been  desirous 
of  ending  such  an  anomaly,  by  consecrating  bishops 
in  England;  but  there  was  danger  of  2,  pi'csmimire ; 
it  could  not  be  done  without  an  Act  of  Parliament  ; 
altogether  there  was  such  strong  opposition,  that  the 
plan  had  to  be  abandoned.  But  after  the  United 
States  had  asserted  their  independence,  such  a  state 
of  things  could  be  tolerated  no  longer ;  but  difficulties 
still  existed  in  England;  so  on  November  14,  1784, 

'  Church  Quarterly,  viii.  308. 


522         THE  CHURCH  OF  THE   PROTESTANT  ERA. 

Dr.  Seabury  was  consecrated  at  Aberdeen  as  Bishop 
of  Connecticut  by  the  Primus  of  Scotland,  and  the 
Bishops  of  Aberdeen,  Ross,  and  Moray;  and  in  1787, 
the  difficulties  in  England  being  removed,  Drs.  Pro- 
voost  and  White,  and  soon  afterwards  Dr.  Maddison, 
were  consecrated  bishops  by  the  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury ;  and  thus  the  American  Church  was  placed 
in  a  position  henceforward  canonically  to  consecrate 
its  own  bishops. 

Such  were  the  circumstances  that  compelled  Whit- 
field to  return  to  England.  He  now  adopted,  with  or 
without  the  consent  of  the  clergy,  the  practice  of  open- 
air  preaching,  which  from  that  time  became  one  of  the 
most  striking  features  of  the  Methodist  movement. 
The  poor  colliers  of  Kingswood,  near  Bristol,  men 
sunk  in  the  most  brutal  ignorance  and  vices,  and  en- 
tire strangers  to  religion,  excited  his  compassion,  and 
induced  him  to  seek  them  out  in  their  haunts.  He 
selected  an  elevated  spot,  called  Rose  Green,  from 
which  to  address  these  people.  The  congregations 
were  at  first  small,  but  as  the  fame  of  his  preaching 
spread,  immense  congregations  assembled  to  hear 
him,  sometimes  as  many  as  twenty  thousand ;  the 
lanes  were  blocked  with  the  carriages  of  the  rich, 
the  fields  were  blackened  with  dense  masses  of  the 
poor ;  Whitfield's  powerful  voice  was  able  to  pene- 
trate to  the  extreme  outskirts ;  and  he  himself  relates 
how  he  saw  on  their  faces  the  white  gutters  made  by 
the  tears  which  fell  plentifully  down  their  black  cheeks, 
• — black  as  they  came  out  of  the  coal-pits. 

Having  been  forbidden  by  the  Chancellor  of  Bristol 
to  preach  any  longer  in  the  diocese,  Whitfield  next 
carried  on  his  work,  with  even  greater  success,  amongst 
the  London  rabble  collected  at  Moorfields  or  Kenning- 


THE  METHODISTS. 


ton  Common  ;  and  he  wrote  to  John  Wesley,  asking 
him  to  continue  the  work  which  he  had  so  successfully 
begun  amongst  the  Kingswood  colliers.  Wesley,  know- 
ing that  Whitfield  had  been  prohibited,  was  at  first 
unwilling  to  do  so,  but  eventually,  with  his  brother 
Charles,  consented  to  act  in  defiance  of  the  chan- 
cellor's inhibition,  even  at  the  cost  of  his  allegiance 
to  the  Church.  By  the  end  of  1738  the  Methodists 
were  excluded  by  the  clergy  from  most  of  the  pulpits. 
This  led,  in  1739,  to  the  erection  of  Methodist  chapels, 
which  it  was  necessary  to  register  as  "  dissenting  cha- 
pels." At  the  latter  end  of  1739  "  religious  societies" 
were  founded,  and  Methodism  began  to  assume  a  re- 
gularly organized  system.  In  1740,  Wesley  became 
the  minister  of  a  registered  chapel  in  Moorfields,  and 
in  the  same  year  he  separated  from  Whitfield. 

This  open  breach  with  the  Church  was  soon  widened. 
In  1 741,  Wesley  gave  his  sanction  to  lay  preachers  ;  in 
1 744,  the  first  Wesleyan  Conference  was  held,  at  which 
only  six  persons,  five  of  them  clergymen  of  the  Church, 
attended  ;  but  with  this  small  conference  originated 
a  system  which  has  since  exerted  the  strongest  influ- 
ence on  the  religion  of  England. 

By  degrees,  Wesley  went  further  and  further  from  the 
Church,  although  even  then  he  never  seems  to  have  con- 
templated the  formation  of  a  separate  sect  or  denomi- 
nation; until,  under  the  excuse  that  bishops  and  priests 
were  originally  one  order,  he  usurped  episcopal  func- 
tions, and  pretended  to  confer  Holy  Orders.  In  1784, 
he  consecrated  Coke  as  bishop  of  the  American  Me- 
thodists ;  and,  in  1787,  he  ordained  three  ministers 
for  Scotland.  He  was  thus  doing  deliberately  what 
he  knew  he  had  neither  the  right  nor  the  power  to  do. 
His  own  conduct  shews  that  he  was  aware  of  this  ;  for 


524         THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


on  one  occasion,  when  a  Greek  bishop,  Erasmus,  Bi- 
shop of  Arcadia,  was  in  London,  he  tried  to  induce 
him  to  consecrate  him  a  bishop.  The  Greek  bishop 
saw  that  the  act  was  uncanonical,  and  refused. 

In  1752,  Wesley,  though  he  was  a  strong  advocate 
of  clerical  celibacy,  had  married  ;  his  wife  was  a  widow, 
with  four  children,  but  he  was  not  suited  for  a  married 
life.  The  marriage  was  an  unhappy  one,  and  they 
separated.  From  this  time  little  variety  occurred  in 
his  energetic  life  :  he  rose  every  morning  at  four ; 
preached  two  or  three  times  every  day ;  rarely  tra- 
velled less  than  4,500  miles  in  the  year.  In  fifty-two 
years  it  is  calculated  that  he  travelled  225,000  miles, 
and  preached  40,000  sermons. 

The  separation  between  Wesley  and  Whitfield  broke 
the  Methodists  up  into  two  parties,  the  Wesleyan  and 
Calvinistic  Methodists.  Wesley  was  an  Arminian, 
Whitfield  a  Calvinist ;  Wesley  hated  Calvinism,  and 
declared  that  he  would  rather  be  a  Turk,  a  Deist,  or 
an  Atheist,  than  a  Calvinist.  So,  under  Whitfield,  the 
Calvinistic  Methodists  became  a  distinct  sect,  and  were 
subsequently  organized  under  the  patronage  of  Selina, 
Countess  of  Huntingdon,  whence  they  are  commonly 
known  as  the  Countess  of  Huntingdon's  Connexion. 
To  this  cause  she  devoted  her  large  fortune.  In  1768 
she  founded  the  college  of  Trevecca  in  South  Wales 
(of  which  she  made  Fletcher,  Vicar  of  Madeley,  pre- 
sident), which,  in  1792,  was  transferred  to  Cheshunt ; 
thence  missionaries  were  sent  to  all  parts  of  the  united 
kingdom ;  but  after  the  death  of  Whitfield,  the  Cal- 
vinistic Methodists  never  occupied  a  position  equal 
to  that  of  their  rivals. 

Before  the  end  of  his  life,  Wesley  outlived  oppo- 
sition from  the  Church.    The  clergy  overpowered  him 


THE  METHODISTS. 


with  invitations  to  preach ;  so  much  was  this  the  case, 
that,  in  1777,  he  writes  in  his  journal,  "  Is  the  offence 
of  the  cross  ceased  ?  it  seems,  after  being  scandalous 
nearly  fifty  years,  I  am  at  length  growing  into  an 
honourable  man."  On  March  2,  1791,  he  died  in 
London,  in  the  eighty-eighth  year  of  his  age. 

Probably,  no  one  man  ever  exercised  so  strong  an 
influence  on  the  religion  of  England  as  John  Wesley; 
and  not  only  in  England,  for  his  influence  extended 
to  the  furthest  corners  of  the  globe.  The  prevalence 
of  drunkenness,  the  coarseness  of  manners  amongst 
the  gentry,  the  rudeness  of  the  peasantry,  the  dead- 
ness  of  religion, — these  were  some  of  the  vices  of  the 
times  against  which  Wesley  strenuously  set  himself. 
Sensible  of  the  great  work  he  was  doing,  he  went  on 
courageously  and  perseveringly,  through  good  report 
and  evil  report,  under  the  greatest  difficulties,  some- 
times at  the  risk  of  his  life.  That  he  did  a  great  work 
all  will  admit.  The  effect  of  his  preaching  was  mar- 
vellous. Under  the  terrible  sense  of  the  conviction 
of  sin  which  he  brought  upon  his  hearers,  the  dread 
of  hell  and  the  hope  of  heaven  which  he  excited 
within  them,  strong  men  were  smitten  to  the  ground, 
women  fell  down  in  convulsions.  He  himself  tells  us 
how,  under  his  preaching,  the  criminals  at  Newgate 
"  dropped  on  every  side  as  thunderstruck."  People 
who  had  never  entered  a  church  before  flocked  to  hear 
him,  and  their  hearts  were  softened  under  his  preach- 
ing. The  long  period  of  darkness  of  the  eighteenth 
century  was  broken,  and  a  new  life  opened  out. 

And  as  he  taught  others  to  live,  so  he  lived  him- 
self; always  the  same  life  of  simplicity,  of  activity, 
and  of  earnestness,  until  the  end.  When  he  was 
seventy  years  of  age,  he  only  allowed  himself  money 
enough  to  buy  the  barest  necessities  of  food  and  cloth- 


526        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


ing  ;  the  rest  of  his  money,  amounting  in  all,  it  is 
believed,  to  ^30,000,  he  devoted  to  charity  and  good 
works. 

To  within  six  months  of  his  death  Wesley  continued 
to  preach  in  the  parish  churches,  and  to  the  last  he 
urged  his  followers  never  to  separate  from  the  Church 
of  England.  At  the  end  of  his  life  he  wrote,  "  I  live 
and  die  a  member  of  the  Church  of  England  ;  and 
no  one  who  regards  my  judgment  or  advice  will  ever 
separate  from  it."  But  whilst  giving  that  advice,  he 
must  have  been  sensible  of  his  own  inconsistency. 
He  himself  professed  to  be  a  member  of  the  Church, 
and  he  was  willing  to  follow  its  discipline,  but  it  was 
only  so  far  as  it  commended  itself  to  his  judgment, 
whilst  the  means  he  employed  directly  impugned  its 
authority. 

It  is  probable  that  Wesley  scarcely  realized  the 
extent  and  importance  of  the  work  which  he  had  ef- 
fected. He  contemplated  a  revival,  and  even  during 
his  lifetime  that  revival  was  independent  of  the  Church  ; 
but  he  had  also  created  a  party,  and  after  his  death 
that  party  was  too  powerful  to  be  thus  easily  con- 
trolled. He  disliked  the  idea  of  separation,  yet  he 
took  the  very  steps  which  were  certain  to  promote 
it  after  he  was  gone ;  and  he  must  have  known 
that  dissent  was  the  logical  and  inevitable  conse- 
quence of  the  practices  and  discipline  which  he  had 
advocated. 

The  position  of  Whitfield  is  far  more  intelligible. 
From  the  first  Whitfield  professed  a  thorough  dis- 
regard of  Church  agency,  except  so  far  as  it  conduced 
to  the  object  which  he  had  in  view.  He  would  as  soon 
preach  in  a  dissenting  chapel  as  a  church  ;  he  would 
communicate  dissenters,  and  he  would  baptize  accord- 
ing to  the  English  Prayer- Book. 


THE  METHODISTS.  52/ 

Almost  immediately  after  the  death  of  Wesley,  the 
Wesleyan  Methodists  took  up  a  deliberately  schis- 
matical  position,  and  their  connexion  with  the  Church 
soon  ceased.  Hitherto,  they  had  been  bound  to  re- 
ceive the  Holy  Eucharist  in  the  parish  churches.  In 
1792,  the  Methodist  Conference  decided  that  laymen 
might  administer  that  Sacrament ;  the  next  year  lay 
administration  became  a  common  thing,  the  only  pro- 
viso being  that  it  should  be  according  to  the  Liturgy 
of  the  English  Church,  and  only  on  such  days  when 
it  was  not  celebrated  in  the  parish  church.  At  the 
present  day  the  Wesleyan  Methodists,  although  as 
early  as  1797  schisms  began  amongst  themselves,  are 
the  largest  body  of  separatists  from  the  Church  ^. 

«  An  incident  illustrative  of  the  unworldly  character  of  Charles  Wesley 
may  be  mentioned.  An  Irish  gentleman  named  Wellesley,  believing 
him  to  belong  to  his  family,  ofifered  to  make  him  his  heir  ;  Charles  re- 
fused his  terms  ;  so  the  estate  went  to  another  branch,  which  was  soon 
raised  to  the  Irish  peerage  under  the  title  of  the  Earl  of  Mornington, 
from  which  sprang  the  Duke  of  Wellington. 


CHAPTER  V. 


THE  EVANGELICAL  MOVEMENT, 

nPHE  spirit  of  Wesley  had,  however,  penetrated  the 
Church ;  and  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century 
EvangeHcahsm,  a  form  analogous  to,  and  springing 
out  of,  Methodism  (although  following  the  teaching 
of  Whitfield  rather  than  that  of  Wesley),  arose  as  a 
natural  consequence,  within  the  Church,  of  the  work 
which  the  Methodists  had  effected  independently  of  it. 
For  some  time  there  had  been  scattered  here  and 
there  throughout  the  country  a  small  knot  of  clergy- 
men with  a  strong  leaning  towards  Calvinism.  Of 
these,  the  best  known  are  Hervey,  who  had  been 
educated  at  Lincoln  College,  and  thus  in  early  life 
brought  under  the  influence  of  Wesley ;  Toplady  who, 
although  an  opponent  to  Wesley,  ascribed  his  con- 
version to  one  of  Wesley's  preachers ;  Berridge,  and 
Romaine ;  these,  together  with  Whitfield,  may  be  re- 
garded as  the  Fathers  of  the  Evangelical  School. 
From  the  end  of  the  eighteenth,  throughout  the  first 
quarter  of  the  present  century,  the  Evangelicals  (as 
they  were  called),  although  never  equal  to  those  who 
were  considered,  in  contradistinction,  the  orthodox 
party,  either  in  numbers  ^  or  purely  intellectual  force ; 
and  never  numbering  in  their  ranks  the  highest  dig- 
nitaries ;  yet  in  their  duties  as  clergymen,  were  the 

'  In  1738,  Wesley  wrote  to  Peter  Bohler  that  he  only  knew  ten  clergy- 
men in  England  who  professed  Evangelical  opinions.  Romaine  says 
when  he  began  his  ministry  there  were  only  six  or  seven,  but  before  he 
died  he  could  number  five  hundred. 


THE  EVANGELICAL  MOVEMENT. 


most  zealous  and  the  most  influential,  and  maintained 
an  almost  undisputed  pre-eminence  amongst  the  masses 
of  the  population. 

Amongst  the  most  prominent  Evangelicals  were 
Newton,  Cecil,  Scott,  Venn,  and  Simeon  :  whilst  Wil- 
berforce,  in  his  "  Practical  View,"  set  forth  the  faith 
of  the  party.  In  Oxford,  Evangelicalism  was  almost 
unknown  ;  a  score  or  so  of  young  men  gathered  round 
Mr.  Bulteel  at  St.  Ebbe's  :  six  students  were  harshly 
expelled  from  St.  Edmund's  Hall,  but  this  was  for 
ultra-Calvinism,  far  in  advance  of  the  ordinary  Evan- 
gelical teaching.  At  Cambridge,  on  the  other  hand, 
led  by  Simeon,  it  ran  through  the  academic  body. 
Simeon,  who  held  the  living  of  Trinity  Church,  and 
the  Vice-Provostship  of  King's  College  for  fifty-three 
years, — thus  having  the  means  of  communicating  the 
doctrines  to  those  who  were  about  to  take  Holy 
Orders, — may  be  regarded  as  the  centre  of  the  move- 
ment, and  the  founder  of  the  modern  "  Low  Church  " 
party,  who  from  him  were  called  "  Simeonites ;"  he 
spent  his  considerable  fortune  in  purchasing  the  ad- 
vowsons  of  important  livings  in  the  large  towns,  and 
these  he  conferred  on  Evangelical  clergymen.  Porteus, 
Bishop  of  London  (died  1808),  was  the  bishop  most 
identified  with  the  movement. 

The  sources  from  which  (next  to  the  Bible)  the 
Evangelicals  drew  their  inspiration,  were  not  Patristic 
or  Anglo-Catholic  ;  but  Protestant  works  of  the  six- 
teenth, and  Nonconformists'  books  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  The  Homilies  were  their  delight ;  they  ap- 
pealed to  them  in  proof  of  their  distinctive  theology ; 
certain  Articles,  especially  the  seventeenth,  they  re- 
garded with  great  satisfaction ;  but  several  parts  of 
the  Church's  formularies,  especially  the  Baptismal  and 

M  m 


530        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 

Burial  Services,  they  found  little  to  their  taste  \  They 
firmly  believed  the  Bible  to  be  given  by  inspiration  of 
God ;  but  if  they  were  asked  why  their  interpretation 
of  the  Bible  was  more  correct  than  that  of  the  dia- 
metrically opposite  sects  into  which  Christendom  is 
divided  ;  or  why  they  accepted  certain  books  as  ca- 
nonical and  rejected  others ;  they  were  in  a  dilemma, 
and  had  absolutely  no  answer  at  all  to  give. 

The  starting-point  of  Evangelicalism  was  the  exact 
opposite  to  that  of  Rationalism,  which  was  so  much  in 
vogue  in  the  eighteenth  century.  With  the  latter,  the 
religion  of  nature  and  the  Christian  religion  were  al- 
most identical  :  with  the  Evangelicals,  human  nature 
was  opposed  to  everything  that  is  good ;  nature  and 
grace  were  two  thoroughly  antagonistic  principles,  and 
till  nature  is  changed  by  grace,  and  that  by  no  external 
ordinances,  but  by  the  perception  of  an  inward  change, 
there  is  in  man  a  radical  repugnance  to  all  religion. 
An  exclusive  pre-eminence  was  given  to  the  doctrine 
of  "Justification  by  Faith:"  but  the  object  of  Faith 
was  not  clearly  defined  ;  with  Justification  Baptism  was 
unconnected  ;  the  doctrine  of  Baptismal  Regeneration 
was  rejected,  and  the  Holy  Eucharist,  as  the  Sacra- 
ment by  which  Faith  is  nourished  in  the  soul,  was 
thrown  into  the  background.  Personal  election,  sud- 
den conversion,  experimental  religion,  with  a  constant 
reference  to  personal  experience ;  the  idea  that  each 
person  must  be  able  to  point  to  the  exact  hour  of  his 
conversion  ;  these  were  considered  as  the  gauge  of 
Gospel  truth ;  (hence  the  term  "  Evangelical,"  as  ap- 
plied to  them ;)  they  preferred  preaching  to  prayers 
and  Sacraments  and  ordinances  of  the  Church,  and 
laid  great  store  on  the  black  gown  in  the  pulpit. 

Stoughton's  Religion  in  England. 


THE  EVANGELICAL  MOVEMENT. 


In  the  present  day,  people  are  inclined  to  under- 
value the  Evangelical  movement;  but  in  order  to  as- 
sign to  it  its  proper  value,  we  must  carry  ourselves 
back  to  its  origin.  The  Evangelicals  were  zealous 
and  laborious  parish  priests  ;  they  worked  incessantly 
in  their  enormous  parishes,  in  visiting  the  sick,  in 
seeking  out  sinners,  in  teaching  in  their  schools,  in 
preaching  ;  in  their  private  lives  they  were  men  of 
great  self-denial,  who  contributed  much  by  their  per- 
sonal character  to  the  spread  of  religion  ;  they  felt 
that  people  did  not  need  so  much  to  be  awoke  to  the 
belief,  as  to  the  sense  of  religion,  and  that  the  require- 
ment of  the  day  was  a  fervent,  heart-stirring  enthu- 
siasm. The  sermons  of  that  time  were  cold,  moral 
essays,  addressed  to  the  head  instead  of  to  the  heart ; 
suited  at  best  to  the  upper  and  educated  classes,  but 
wholly  unsuited  to  the  poor  and  unlearned,  and  ill- 
adapted  to  change  the  character  or  reclaim  the  lost3 

For  this  reason,  the  Evangelicals  attached  great  im- 
portance to  sermons.  Their  sermons  frequently  lasted 
an  hour,  sometimes  an  hour-and-a-half ;  they  would 
preach,  as  they  said,  half-an-hour  "  before  God  came," 
and  then  for  an  hour  afterwards ;  in  their  sermons 
they  substituted  Bible  truths  for  the  abstract  argu- 
ments to  which  people  had  been  so  long  accustomed ; 
they  represented  sin  in  its  most  hideous  colours,  and 
an  enraged  God  as  a  severe  creditor,  who  would  exact 
the  uttermost  farthing,  and  Christ  as  the  sinners' 
friend,  ready  and  willing  to  reclaim  them.  Thus  they 
raised  the  religious  feeling  which  had  been  so  long 
dormant,  and  infused  warmth  and  reality  into  the 
hard,  intellectual  religion  of  the  day. 

It  is  easy  now  to  note  the  weak  side  of  the  move- 
ment.   It  was  no  doubt  a  narrow  and  emotional  theo- 

M  m  2 


532        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


logy ;  in  preaching  the  doctrine  of  the  new  birth  the 
EvangeHcals  dwelt  wholly  on  the  negative  side  of  that 
great  truth  ;  belief  was  not  the  great  essential,  but 
feeling.  In  laying  stress  on  the  truth  that  the  Gospel 
is  a  revelation  from  God  to  lost  sinners,  designed  to 
produce  a  corresponding  effect  on  our  hearts,  and  that 
the  faith  of  Christ  is  a  faith  that  works  by  love,  they 
did  a  great  work.  But  they  went  further,  and  taught 
that  the  belief  and  the  action  must  be  grounded  on 
the  feelings,  considered  as  the  immediate  and  sensible 
operation  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  The  practical  result  of 
such  teaching  was  a  popular  impression  that  the  test 
of  a  correct  understanding  of  Scripture  is  the  amount 
of  comfort  and  edification  derived  from  it,  and  that 
pious  feelings  are  all  that  is  required  for  a  right  un- 
derstanding of  the  Bible. 

The  results  which  followed  the  movement  were 
most  striking.  The  last  vestiges  of  Socinianism  were 
eradicated  ;  the  infidelity  and  irreligion  which  (not- 
withstanding the  Wesleyan  movement)  had  still  lin- 
gered on,  disappeared  ;  a  philanthropic  energy  mani- 
fested itself;  Sunday-schools,  which  had  been  first 
established  in  1781  by  Robert  Raikes,  a  printer  at 
Gloucester,  in  conjunction  with  the  Rev.  Thomas  Stock, 
a  clergyman  in  that  city,  multiplied*^;  and  several 
societies  were  established.  Unfortunately  in  their 
work  little  regard  was  paid  to  the  Church;  in  1800 
the  "Church  Missionary  Society"  was  founded,  on 
principles  opposed  to  those  of  the  venerable  Society 
for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel;  in  1801  the  "Re- 
ligious Tract  Society,"  inculcating  no  distinctive  Church 

■=  Fifty  years  after  their  foundation  they  had  increased  to  16,828,  and 
afforded  accommodation  to  rather  more  than  1,500,000  pupils. 


THE  EVANGELICAL  MOVEMENT. 


533 


teaching;  in  1804,  the  "Bible  Society'^,"  contrasting 
with  the  Society  for  Promoting  Christian  Knowledge, 
in  not  diffusing,  with  Bibles,  Prayer-Books,  and  publi- 
cations of  the  Church's  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures  ; 
and  the  "British  and  Foreign  School  Society,"  founded 
on  principles  which  expressly  excluded  the  Creeds  and 
formularies  of  the  Church. 

It  would  be  unjust  to  attribute  to  the  Evangelicals 
the  whole  blame  of  the  lamentable^condition  of  all  the 
outward  circumstance  of  the  Church,  its  services  and  fa- 
brics, at  the  end  of  the  last,  and  during  the  first  quarter 
of  the  present  century,  although  a  large  measure  of  fault 
justly  attaches  to  them.  They  never  troubled  them- 
selves (Mr.  Simeon  himself  allowed  it)  about  working 
on  the  lines,  or  according  to  the  rubrics,  of  the  English 
Church.  How  the  services  were  performed,  how  slo- 
venly, how  unfitted  they  might  be  to  the  grandeur  of 
God's  house ;  whether  they  were  on  the  type  of  the 
conventicle  ;  whether  the  ritual  was,  or  was  not,  in 
accordance  with  the  rubrics,  they  concerned  themselves 
but  little.  And  yet  Evangelicals  talked  much  about 
rubrics.  A  member  of  the  party  once  complained  to 
a  bishop  of  a  clergyman  overstepping  the  rubrics. 
"Do  yoti  have  Morning  and  Evening  Prayer  in  your 
Church?"  enquired  the  Bishop. — "No." — "  Then  the 
you  say  about  rubrics  the  better,"  was  the  bishop's 
verdict. 

The  period  we  assign  to  the  pre-eminence  of  Evan- 
gelicalism is  from  the  last  few  years  of  the  eighteenth 
century  to  a.d.  1833  ;  it  will  now  be  necessary  to  men- 
tion a  few  of  the  most  important  events  in  the  Church's 
history  during  that  period. 

The  number  of  Bibles,  Testaments,  or  portions  issued  by  the  British 
and  Foreign  Bible  Society  for  1880  was  2,846,029. 


534        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA, 

We  may  mention  in  passing,  that  in  1801  an  Act  of 
Parliament  was  passed,  rendering  clergymen  ineligible 
to  sit  in  the  House  of  Commons,  Horne  Tooke  having 
been  the  last  to  enjoy  that  privilege  as  member  for 
Old  Sarum^ 

One  of  the  proudest  monuments  of  the  English 
Church  in  the  present  day  is  its  colonial  episcopate. 
As  early  as  1638,  Laud,  as  has  been  already  stated^, 
formed  a  plan  for  sending  a  bishop  to  New  England, 
and  after  the  Restoration  a  patent  constituting  Dr. 
Murray  Bishop  of  Virginia,  was  actually  made  out  by 
Lord  Clarendon,  but  was  defeated  afterwards  by  the 
accession  of  the  Cabal.  About  a.d.  1713  a  larger  plan, 
for  the  endowment  of  four  bishoprics,  two  for  Jamaica 
and  Barbados,  and  two  for  the  Continent  of  America, 
in  Virginia  and  New  Jersey,  was  matured,  with  the 
personal  approbation  and  encouragement  of  Queen 
Anne;  in  fact,  at  Burlington,  in  New  Jersey,  jC^oo 
had  actually  been  expended  upon  the  purchase  of  a 
house  for  the  bishop,  when,  unfortunately,  the  project 
was  cut  short  by  the  death  of  the  Queen.  In  171 5, 
Archbishop  Tenison  bequeathed  by  his  will  ^1000  to- 
wards an  American  episcopate ;  but  after  the  accession 
of  the  Hanoverian  dynasty,  nothing  was  done  for 
seventy  years,  till  the  separation  of  the  United  States, 
when,  as  we  have  seen  \  Dr.  Seabury  was  consecrated 
in  1784  as  the  first  bishop  of  North  America.  In 
1787,  the  first  colonial  see  of  Nova  Scotia  was  founded, 
and  Dr.  Inglis  appointed  its  bishop;  that  of  Quebec 
was  founded  six  years  later,  in  1793  ;  in  1814,  the  see 

"  A  bill  introduced  this  year  (1881)  for  the  repeal  of  the  Horne  Tooke 
Act,  was  defeated  in  the  House  of  Commons  by  no  to  loi  votes.  Why 
clergjTTien  who  have  no  cure  of  souls  should  be  less  fit  to  sit  in  Par- 
liament, or  why  the  clergy  should  be  the  only  section  of  the  community 
excluded,  it  is  difficult  to  understand.  '  Page  521. 


THE  EVANGELICAL  MOVEMENT. 


535 


of  Calcutta  was  formed,  and  Dr.  Middleton  appointed 
bishop ;  ten  years  later,  Jamaica  became  a  bishopric. 
These  were  the  only  colonial  sees  established  at  the 
period  we  are  now  considering. 

Until  very  recent  times,  two  great  educational  so- 
cieties, the  "  National "  and  the  "  British  and  Foreign 
Bible"  Societies,  provided  for  the  elementary  educa- 
tion of  the  poor.  Of  these,  the  former,  founded  in 
1811,  required  instruction  in  the  Bible,  Liturgy,  and 
Catechism  of  the  Church  of  England  ;  the  latter, 
founded  a  few  years  earlier,  required  the  Bible,  but 
prohibited  the  Creeds  from  being  taught  in  the  schools 
which  it  aided,  although,  at  the  same  time,  it  dis- 
claimed being  classed  amongst  dissenters.  Under 
these  two  societies,  the  education  of  the  poor  was  con- 
ducted without  State  aid  till  1833,  when,  for  the  first 
time,  parliamentary  grants  were  made. 

To  understand  the  important  change  effected  by  the 
Roman  Catholic  Emancipation  Act,  we  must  take 
a  brief  review  of  the  penal  laws  affecting  dissenters. 
The  Act  of  Toleration  had  afforded  no  relief  to  Ro- 
manists, or  persons  denying  the  Trinity.  In  1700, 
fresh  laws,  although  they  were  seldom  enforced,  were 
enacted  against  the  former  ;  they  were  prohibited  from 
purchasing  or  possessing  land,  or  from  educating  their 
children  abroad.  By  the  Roman  Catholic  Relief  Act 
of  1778 — the  precursor  of  the  "  No  Popery"  riots  of 
1780 — supplemented  by  an  Act  of  1791.  various  dis- 
abilities under  which  the  Romanists  laboured  were 
removed.  Their  priests  were  no  longer  subjected  to 
perpetual  imprisonment  for  performing  their  duties ; 
those  of  them  educated  abroad  were  relieved  from 
penalties ;  the  prohibitions  to  their  purchasing  lands 
were  taken  off ;  a  modified  freedom  in  worship  and 


536        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


education  was  allowed  ;  and  their  Peers,  although  still 
debarred  by  the  Oath  of  Supremacy  from  sitting  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  were  relieved  from  banishment  from 
the  king's  presence,  to  which  they  were  previously 
subjected^.  In  1779,  the  Dissenting  Ministers'  Act 
relieved  Dissentinof  Protestant  ministers  and  school- 
masters  from  the  limited  subscription  to  the  Thirty- 
nine  Articles  required  by  the  Toleration  Act ;  and 
another  Act,  in  181 2,  relieved  them  from  the  remaining 
oaths  and  declaration  required  under  the  latter  statute. 
The  next  year  removed  the  disabilities  of  Unitarians 
from  the  benefits  of  the  Toleration  Act,  although  the 
civil  disabilities  still  remained  till  1828. 

The  concessions  made  in  1778  to  the  Romanists 
of  England  and  Ireland  aroused  a  storm  of  Protestant 
rage  ;  but  when,  in  the  following  year,  it  was  proposed 
to  extend  the  like  privileges  to  Scotland,  it  was  more 
than  could  be  tolerated ;  the  people  herded  themsevles 
into  "  Protestant  Associations,"  and  broke  out  into 
open  rebellion,  under  the  leadership  of  Lord  George 
Gordon.  For  three  days  "No  Popery"  riots  held 
London  in  terror ;  the  chapels  and  the  residences  of 
the  Romanists  were  destroyed ;  the  house  of  Lord 
Mansfield,  who  had  recently  acquitted  a  Roman  priest 
who  was  charged  with  celebrating  Mass,  was  set  on 
fire ;  the  lawn  sleeves  of  the  Archbishop  of  York  were 
torn  off,  and  thrown  in  his  face ;  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln, 
on  his  way  to  Parliament,  was  obliged  to  take  refuge 
in  a  house,  from  which  it  is  said  he  escaped  in  a 
woman's  dress  along  the  tiles  ;  the  city  was  in  flames ; 
"the  sight  was  dreadful,"  says  Dr. Johnson,  "thirty-six 
fires  all  blazing  at  one  time;"  Parliament  was  in- 
vested by  the  mob  ;  and  the  tumult  was,  at  last,  with 

^  Taswcll-Langmeads  English  Constitutional  History,  p.  751. 


THE  EVANGELICAL  MOVEMENT, 


537 


great  difficulty,  at  the  expense  of  some  hundreds  of 
Hves  and  great  loss  of  property,  put  down  by  the 
military.  A  strong  Protestant  feeling  pervaded  all 
classes  of  society ;  advertisements  appeared  in  the 
newspapers  that  his  Majesty's  hosier  was  one  of  the 
staunchest  Protestants  in  the  kingdom,  and  that  his 
Majesty's  wine-merchants  were  also  Protestants  \ 

In  1787,  and  again  in  1789  and  1790,  attempts  were 
made — on  the  last  occasion,  under  no  less  powerful 
patronage  than  that  of  Mr.  Fox — to  repeal  the  Test  and 
Corporation  Acts  ;  the  measure,  however,  was  opposed 
by  Pitt  and  Burke,  and  was  defeated  by  nearly  three 
to  one  (149  to  62)  :  and  no  other  attempt  was  made 
for  nearly  forty  years. 

In  1 791,  a  further  relaxation  was  made  to  Romanists, 
described  as  "Protesting  Catholic  Dissenters,"  i.e.  those 
Romanists  who  protested  against  the  Pope's  claims  to 
excommunicate  kings,  and  to  free  their  subjects  from 
their  allegiance;  and  in  1795,  a  grant  was  made  to- 
wards a  Roman  Catholic  College  at  Maynooth,  to 
meet  the  necessity  created  by  the  destruction,  during 
the  French  Revolution,  of  the  Roman  Catholic  places 
of  education  in  France. 

In  1800,  the  union  between  England  and  Ireland 
was  brought  about  by  the  help  of  the  Romanists,  to 
whom  Pitt  promised  relief  from  the  penal  laws.  But 
Pitt  found  that  he  had  promised  more  than  he  was 
able  to  perform.  George  III.  was  persuaded  that 
to  give  the  promised  relief  would  be  contrary  to  his 
Coronation  Oath,  and  declared  that  he  "should  reckon 
any  man  his  personal  enemy"  who  advocated  the  mea- 
sure. Pitt  in  consequence  resigned.  In  1807,  the 
Roman  Catholic  emancipation   question  was  again 

*■  Lord  Mahon's  Hist.,  vii.  36. 


538        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


raised  by  Lord  Grenville's  ministry,  but  the  king 
again  asserted  his  royal  power,  and  dismissed  them. 
But  the  question  was  not  allowed  to  rest,  and  scarcely 
a  session  went  by  without  its  being  introduced  into 
Parliament.  In  182  i,  an  Emancipation  Bill  was  passed 
by  the  House  of  Commons  ;  year  after  year  a  similar 
bill  was  passed,  but  always  with  the  same  fate,  of 
being  rejected  by  the  Lords.  In  1828,  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  became  Prime  Minister,  and  only  accepted 
such  reforms  as  he  could  no  longer  resist.  The  same 
year  the  Test  and  Corporation  Acts  were  done  away 
with  ;  henceforward  people  holding  office  were  bound 
to  declare,  on  "  the  true  faith  of  a  Christian ',"  that 
they  would  not  act  to  the  injury  of  the  established 
Church  ;  and  the  following  year,  the  popular  feeling 
having  grown  too  strong  to  be  resisted,  and  the  "  Ca- 
tholic Association,"  under  Daniel  O'Connell,  threaten- 
ing civil  war,  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  to  the  disgust 
of  the  High  Tories,  withdrew  his  opposition,  and  the 
"  Catholic  Emancipation  Act,"  to  which  George  IV. 
gave  a  reluctant  assent,  was  passed.  Instead  of  the 
oath  of  supremacy  and  against  Transubstantiation, 
P.omanists,  on  taking  the  oath  of  allegiance,  and 
making  a  disavowal  of  the  doctrine  that  persons  ex- 
communicated by  the  Pope  might  be  deposed  or  mur- 
dered, could  be  admitted  to  both  Houses  of  Parlia- 
ment, to  all  corporate,  judicial  (except  in  the  eccle- 
siastical courts),  civil  and  political  offices,  except  those 
of  regent,  lord  chancellor  of  England  or  Ireland  (the 
latter  office  has  since  been  thrown  open  to  all,  irre- 
spective of  creed),  and  lord  lieutenant  of  Ireland,  In 

'  By  this  declaration  Jews  were  excluded.  In  1845,  however,  this 
exclusion  was  removed,  but  it  was  not  till  1858  that  the  Jews  were 
admitted  into  Parliament. 


THE  EVANGELICAL  MOVEMENT. 


539 


1832  an  act  was  passed,  putting  the  Roman  Catholics, 
with  respect  to  their  schools,  places  of  worship,  chari- 
ties, &c.,  on  the  same  footing  as  Protestant  dissenters  ; 
and  a  few  years  later  almost  all  the  other  enactments 
against  them,  although  they  had  before  been  obsolete, 
were  removed  from  the  Statute  Book, 

In  1833,  Quakers  and  Moravians  were  in  like  man- 
ner admitted  to  Parliament,  by  making  an  affirmation 
instead  of  an  oath  ^. 

In  1832  had  been  passed  the  Reform  Bill. 

Thus  an  entirely  new  era  had  begun  to  the  Church. 
The  Legislature,  which  had  hitherto,  by  a  fiction,  con- 
sisted exclusively  of  Churchmen,  ceased  to  be  even 
nominally  connected  with  it. 

A  short  review  of  the  history  of  the  Church  will 
enable  us  better  to  understand  the  relation,  past  and 
present,  between  Church  and  State. 

The  Church  and  the  world,  from  the  earliest  ages, 
have  been  in  opposition  to  one  another.  The  Church 
has  ever  been  a  standing  witness  against  wrong,  an 
opponent  to  the  licentious  practices  of  the  world,  and 
the  ambitious  designs  of  princes  ;  it  has  therefore  been, 
with  only  a  few  exceptions,  the  leading  object  with 
kings  and  emperors  to  subjugate  the  Church  to  the 
control  of  the  State.  The  Church  of  England  early 
won  its  liberties  ;  its  right  to  elect  its  own  bishops 
was  admitted  in  the  eighth  century.  The  Normans 
for  a  time  encroached  upon  its  prerogatives,  but  these 
were  again  established  by  the  Magna  Charta  of  King 
John,  which  was  confirmed  by  every  successive  sove- 
reign from  John  to  Henry  VIII.,  and  which  declared 
that  the  Church  of  England  was  free,  and  enjoyed  the 

'  7  and  8  Vict.,  c.  102  ;  9  and  10  Vict.,  c.  59.  Taswell-Langmead, 
Eng.  Const.  Hist.,  753. 


540        THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


right  of  electing  its  own  bishops.  Its  spiritual  as 
well  as  temporal  rights  were  trodden  under  foot  by 
Henry  VIII. ;  and  from  that  time  the  Church  has  been 
under  bondage,  and  the  rights  and  liberties  which  he 
invaded  have  never  since  been  restored.  The  Church 
was  deprived  of  its  voice  in  the  appointment  of  its 
bishops ;  of  its  rights  to  hold  its  provincial  synods 
without  permission  of  the  Crown,  a  permission  which, 
since  1 7 1 7,  was  entirely  withheld ;  of  its  power  to 
enact  canons  without  the  consent  of  the  king ;  of  its 
jurisdiction  over  matters  of  doctrine.  From  Eliza- 
beth to  Charles  II.,  the  queen  and  kings  were  on  the 
whole  Catholics  ;  from  the  accession  of  William  of 
Orange  (with  the  exception  of  the  short  reign  of 
Queen  Anne),  through  the  Georgian  era,  the  Protes- 
tant element  had  the  ascendancy,  and  the  object  aimed 
at  was  to  reduce  the  Church  to  a  mere  department  of 
the  State,  and  to  place  it  under  control  of  Parliament. 
The  functions  of  the  sovereign,  and  the  right  of  ap- 
pointment to  bishoprics,  were  virtually  transferred  to 
the  Prime  Minister,  who  noiu  need  not  be  a  communi- 
cant, not  even  a  Churchman  ;  so  that  it  comes  to  this, 
that  the  Royal  Supremacy  really  means  the  supremacy 
of  the  Prime  Minister,  who  is,  except  nominally,  ap- 
pointed by  the  House  of  Commons,  which  may  be 
composed  not  only  of  dissenters,  but  of  Jews,  and  in- 
fidels, and  atheists ;  and  this  Prime  Minister  is  the 
person  who  is  entrusted  with  the  appointment  of  arch- 
bishops and  bishops  and  deans,  of  controlling  the  ac- 
tion of  Convocation,  of  choosing  the  members  of  the 
Privy  Council  who  are  to  determine  ecclesiastical 
causes,  to  decide  abstruse  points  of  doctrine,  and  to 
reverse  the  decision  of  bishops. 

We  must  now  return,  and  enquire  into  the  condition 


THE  EVANGELICAL  MOVEMENT. 


of  the  Church  in  the  early  part  of  the  present  century. 
A  few  words  are  sufficient  at  once  to  state  the  case 
and  to  explain  the  cause, — there  were  more  parishes 
than  there  were  clergy,  and  more  than  half  the  clergy 
were  non-resident.  Yet,  notwithstanding,  it  was  under 
strong  opposition,  not  only  from  the  non-resident  in- 
cumbents themselves,  but  also  from  the  bishops  (twenty- 
one  of  whom,  it  must  be  told,  held  livings  themselves), 
that,  in  18 12,  Lord  Harrowby  was  able  to  carry  a  bill 
through  Parliament,  which  made  the  very  reasonable 
requirement,  that  a  non  -  resident  incumbent  should 
keep  a  curate  with  a  suitable  stipend. 

The  poorness  of  the  livings,  and  the  insufficiency 
of  the  emoluments,  rendered  pluralities,  and  conse- 
quently non-residence,  necessary.  There  were  many 
lucrative  livings,  but  too  frequently  these  were  looked 
upon  as  a  provision  for  younger  sons,  for  tutors,  and 
sometimes  incapable  persons,  who  were  appointed  to 
them  without  the  slightest  regard  to  their  doctrine 
or  their  ability,  for  the  performance  of  the  smallest 
amount  of  perfunctory  services. 

Bishop  Blomfield  was  translated  from  Chester  to 
London  in  1828,  and  in  the  latter  diocese,  then  con- 
taining 1,650,000  souls,  he  found  a  truly  lamentable 
condition  of  things.  In  one  parish,  with  40,000  in- 
habitants, there  was  only  one  clergyman  ;  in  four  pa- 
rishes, with  166,000,  there  were  eleven;  in  twenty 
others,  with  739,000  inhabitants,  there  were  forty- 
five  ;  and  in  nine,  with  232,000,  there  were  nineteen 
clergymen  \ 

The  episcopate  of  Bishop  Porteus    the  only  bishop 

'  Second  Report  of  Church  Enquiry  Commissioners. 

Bishop  Porteus  is  the  bishop  who,  when  he  was  asked  on  one  occa- 
sion to  preach  a  charity  sermon,  answered  that  he  only  gave  one  a-year, 
and  for  that  year  it  was  bespoken. 


542 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


of  the  time  who  was  thoroughly  associated  with  the 
EvangeHcals,  extended  over  twenty-one  years,  from 
1787  to  1808,  and  during  the  whole  of  that  time  not 
one  church  was  built  in  London.  Bishop  Blomfield, 
when  he  had  been  bishop  eighteen  years,  was  able  to 
announce  that  provision  had  been  made  for  the  erec- 
tion of  sixty- three  new  churches  ;  and  at  the  end  of 
an  episcopate  of  twenty -eight  years  (only  seven  more 
than 'that  of  Bishop  Porteus)  he  could  point  to  nearly 
two  hundred  churches  which  had  been  consecrated 
by  himself 

A  bishopric  seems,  at  that  time,  to  have  been  con- 
sidered as  a  provision  for  the  sons  of  the  aristocracy. 
In  181 5,  of  the  two  archbishops,  one  was  the  son,  the 
other  the  grandson,  of  a  peer.  Of  the  bishops,  one 
was  a  peer  in  his  own  right ;  two  were  sons,  one 
grandson,  two  brothers,  two  near  connexions  of  peers  ; 
seven  had  been  tutors  in  the  families  of  noblemen, 
and  two  the  tutors  of  ministers.  So  that,  out  of 
twenty-six  prelates  at  the  time,  nineteen  were  thus 
appointed. 

And  as  they  owed  their  position  to  their  family 
connexion,  so  do  they  seem  to  have  been  careful  in 
providing  for  their  own ;  bishops  not  unfrequently 
regarded  the  property  of  the  Church  as  a  suitable 
means  for  providing  marriage-portions  for  their  sons 
and  daughters.  Amongst  the  family  of  one  arch- 
bishop were  shared  sixteen  rectories,  vicarages,  and 
chaplaincies,  besides  precentorships  and  other  digni- 
ties in  cathedrals  ;  one  son-in-law,  in  about  as  many 
years,  received  eight  different  preferments,  estimated 
at  about  10,000  a-year.  A  daughter  and  a  sister 
were  scarcely  less  fortunate  in  their  ecclesiastical  alli- 
ances.   The  three  sons  of  another  bishop  were  all 


THE  EVANGELICAL  MOVEMENT. 


543 


appointed  to  dignities  in  his  cathedral ;  two  of  them 
had  also  four,  and  one  two  other  pieces  of  preferment. 
Another  bishop  and  his  family  enjoyed  a  revenue  of 
;/^3 1,645  a-year,  two  of  his  sons  being  prebends  of  his 
cathedral,  whilst  one  of  them  held  a  valuable  rectory 
of  one  parish,  the  lay  rector)^  of  another,  was  ex- 
amining chaplain  to  his  father,  registrar  of  the  diocese, 
and  chief  steward  of  several  manors ;  whilst  his  son- 
in-law  was  prebend  of  his  cathedral,  and  held  four 
livings 

Bishop  Watson  of  Llandaff  may  be  taken  as  a  re- 
presentative Liberal  Bishop  at  the  end  of  the  last,  and 
the  beginning  of  the  present  century.  He  graduated 
at  the  University  as  second  Wrangler  in  1759,  was 
Professor  of  Chemistry,  and  in  1771  of  Divinity,  at 
Cambridge.  Having  been  tutor  to  the  Duke  of  Rut- 
land, he  was  in  1782  appointed  Bishop  of  Llandaff. 
As  to  his  doctrine,  he  depreciated  the  Thirty-nine  Ar- 
ticles, except  those  which  condemned  the  Church  of 
Rome  ;  the  Liturgy  required  revision  ;  the  Athanasian 
Creed  did  not  fairly  represent  the  doctrine  of  the  Gos- 
pels ;  he  advocated  the  cause  of  Archdeacon  Black- 
burne,  and  claimed  the  Unitarians  as  Christians.  He 
held  the  see  of  Llandaff  for  thirty-four  years,  but  as 
there  was  no  habitable  residence,  he  never  resided  in 
his  diocese ;  he  tells  us  he  had  retired  "  in  a  great 
measure  from  public  life ;"  that  he  spent  his  time 
partly  in  writing,  but  "  principally  in  building  farm- 
houses, blasting  rocks,  enclosing  wastes,  in  making 
bad  land  good,"  &c.  ;  his  income  was  made  up  to 
^2,000  by  the  emoluments  arising  from  sixteen  liv- 
ings, on  nine  of  which  he  kept  a  resident-curate.  An- 
other account  of  the  bishop  tells  us  that  he  enjoyed 

°  Black  Book,  published  in  1820. 


544         THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 


"all  the  emoluments  of  his  stations,  and  the  fame 
arising  from  his  writings in  rural  retirement  at  Cal- 
garth  Park,  Westmoreland,  a  beautiful  sequestered 
situation,  where  his  lordship  passes  much  of  his  time 
in  the  indulgence  of  those  deep  studies  to  which  his 
whole  life  has  been  addicted  p."  Bishop  Watson  was 
buried  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

The  laxity  of  Bishop  Bathurst  ("  good  Bishop  Bath- 
urst,"  as  he  was  called),  who  was  Bishop  of  Norwich 
1805 — 1837,  is  well  known. 

The  diocese  of  Lincoln  extended  from  the  Thames 
at  Egham  to  the  Humber,  and  comprised  the  counties 
of  Lincoln,  Leicester,  Huntingdon,  Bedford,  Bucking- 
ham, and  part  of  Hertfordshire ;  and  yet  for  two  hun- 
dred years  no  Bishop  of  Lincoln  had  resided  within 
eighty  miles  of  his  cathedral. 

The  bishopric  of  Chester  contained  the  largest 
population  of  any  diocese  in  England  (1,850,000), 
with  a  stipend  of  only  ^1,400  a-year,  and  an  insuf- 
ficient residence,  and  was  too  poor  to  be  held  except 
with  some  other  benefice ;  and  as  it  was  only  accepted 
with  the  expectation  of  early  translation,  little  interest 
was  taken  in  the  performance  of  its  episcopal  duties. 
How  far  this  was  the  case  may  be  judged  from  the 
fact,  that  Bishop  Sparke  (who  held  the  see  for  three 
years)  confirmed  8,000  persons  at  Manchester  in  one 
day.  Together  with  Chester,  Bishop  Blomfield  held  the 
rectory  of  Bishopsgate,  with  a  population  of  10,000, 
and  an  income  of  ^2,000  a-year. 

The  monition  delivered  by  the  bishop  at  an  ordi- 

°  As  an  author,  Bishop  Watson  is  entitled  to  rank  amongst  the  great 
writers  of  his  time ;  his  principal  works  being  "  An  Apology  for  Chris- 
tianity," which  he  addressed  to  Gibbon  ;  and  an  "  Apology  for  the  Bible," 
which  was  designed  as  an  answer  to  Paine's  "  Age  of  Reason." 

p  Nicholls'  Literary  Anecdotes,  viii.  145. 


THE  EVANGELICAL  MOVEMENT. 


545 


nation  to  his  chaplain  is  :  "  Take  heed  that  the  per- 
sons you  present  unto  us  be  apt  and  meet  for  their 
learning  and  godly  conversation,  to  exercise  their  mi- 
nistry duly  to  the  honour  of  God  and  the  edifying  of 
His  Church ;"  to  which  the  Archdeacon  shall  answer  : 
"  I  have  enquired  of  them  and  also  examined  them, 
and  think  them  so  to  be."  Yet  the  manner  adopted 
in  the  examination  of  candidates  for  Holy  Orders 
seems  in  some  cases  to  have  been  somewhat  origi- 
nal. The  chaplain  and  son-in-law  of  Bishop  North 
(178 1  — 1820)  examined  the  candidates  in  a  tent  in 
a  cricket- field,  he  himself  being  one  of  the  players. 
Bishop  Pelham  (1807 — 1827)  performed  the  same 
office  by  sending  his  butler  with  a  message  to  the 
candidates  to  write  an  essay.  The  chaplain  of  Bishop 
Douglas  (1787 — 1807)  examined  them  whilst  he  was 
shaving,  and  stopped  the  examination  when  the  ex- 
aminee had  construed  two  words 

This  laxity  of  the  bishops  will  account  for  what 
we  are  told  about  the  clergy.  When  Bishop  Stanley 
was  appointed  to  Norwich  in  succession  to  Bishop 
Bathurst,  who  held  that  see  1805 — 1837,  we  are  told 
of  the  condition  in  which  he  found  the  diocese  ;  "  non- 
residence,  pluralities,  one  service  once  a-week,  some- 
times only  once  a-fortnight ;"  an  abuse  which  had 
reached  such  a  pitch  that,  in  one  instance,  fifteen 
churches  were  served  by  three  brothers.  Hannah 
More  speaks  of  thirteen  contiguous  parishes  without 
even  a  resident  curate.  A  clergyman  of  the  diocese 
of  Norwich  wrote:  "when  first  I  came  here  in  1837, 
out  of  twenty-eight  parishes  (in  the  deanery  of  Sand- 
ford),  five  churches  only  were  open  for  Divine  Service 

Memoir  of  Bishop  Blomfield. 
N  n 


546         THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 

twice  on  the  Lord's  Day^"  Bishop  Jenkinson,  in  his 
primary  charge  in  1828  to  the  clergy  of  Llandaff,  an- 
nounced that  he  could  not  permit  any  clergyman  to 
serve  more  than  two  churches  on  the  same  day. 

From  such  a  state  of  things  arose  the  neglect  of 
pastoral  visitation,  and  the  imperfect  administration 
of  baptisms  and  burials  ;  Mr.  Stanley  (the  future  Bishop 
of  Norwich)  succeeded,  in  the  living  of  Alderley  in 
Cheshire,  a  rector  who  boasted  that  he  had  never  en- 
tered a  sick  man's  house ;  and  frequently  no  services 
were  performed  in  the  parish  church,  for  the  reason 
that,  though  there  was  a  population  of  1300,  no  one 
availed  himself  of  the  rector's  ministration. 

An  anecdote  is  told  of  Bishop  Blomfield,  who,  when 
Bishop  of  Chester,  had  reason  to  rebuke  a  clergyman 
for  drunkenness.  "  But,  my  lord,  I  was  never  drunk 
on  duty,"  was  the  excuse. — "  On  duty,"  replied  the 
Bishop,  "  when  is  a  clergyman  not  on  duty?" — "  True," 
said  the  other,  "  I  never  thought  of  that^" 

What,  under  such  a  state  of  things,  was  the  con- 
dition of  the  parish  churches.  The  churches  stood 
beautiful  in  their  original  structure,  such  as  no  other 
country  but  England  can  boast,  but  rendered  para- 
gons of  ugliness  by  modern  barbarism,  or,  as  it  was  con- 
sidered, modern  improvement ;  the  high  roof  cut  down  ; 
the  windows  robbed  of  their  stained  glass,  and  even 
their  tracery  ;  or,  if  here  and  there  some  painted  win- 
dows were  to  be  found,  Bible  subjects  were  religiously 
excluded,  and  the  arms  of  the  corporation,  or  some 
local  magnate,  emblazoned  in  their  stead ;  the  pillars 
were  cut  away  to  make  room  for  hideous  monuments ; 
fine  frescoes  were  buried  beneath  a  dozen  coats  of 
w^hitewash  ;  the  area  of  nave,  aisles,  and  even  choir 

'  Life  of  Bishop  Stanley,  p.  26.         '  Memoir  of  Bishop  Blomfield. 


THE  EVANGELICAL  MOVEMENT. 


547 


was  choked  up  with  hideous  high  -  backed  pews, 
"  lidless  boxes,"  as  they  have  been  called,  more  re- 
sembling sheep-pens  than  anything  else ;  there  were 
the  unsightly  galleries ;  the  tripartite  erection,  the 
"three-decker"  pulpit,  overhanging  and  often  hiding 
the  altar;  the  meanly-dressed  altar,  the  common  re- 
ceptacle of  the  hats  and  cloaks  of  the  congregation ; 
a  basin,  the  not  unusual  substitute  for,  or  more  fre- 
quently an  addition  to,  the  font ;  the  unused  credence- 
table  ;  and  if  here  and  there  a  new  church  was  built,, 
at  a  time  when  Gothic  churches  had  fallen  into  dis- 
repute, they  were  in  imitation  of  large  meeting-houses, 
and  without  the  least  pretence  of  architecture  ;  whilst 
as  to  the  preservation  of  the  fabrics,  it  was  thought 
sufficient  to  keep  them  as  they  were,  with  an  occa- 
sional coat  of  whitewash,  at  the  minimum  expense  to 
the  present  generation  of  ratepayers  ;  but  in  a  state 
gradually  leading  to  decay,  as  witness  the  churches  of 
forty  or  fifty  years  ago,  the  uneven  pavements,  the 
windows  broken  and  stopped  up  anyhow  so  as  to  ex- 
clude the  wind  and  rain,  whilst  the  walls  and  founda- 
tions were  undermined  with  weeds  and  damp 

Then  as  to  the  services  held  in  these  churches. 
The  rubrics  enjoining  daily  Matins  and  Evensong, 
and  the  Litany  on  Wednesdays  and  Fridays,  were 
the  same  as  they  are  now,  but  were  almost  universally 
unobserved  ;  the  churches  were  closed  from  Sunday 
to  Sunday  ;  the  Holy  Communion  was  celebrated  once 
a-quarter,  sometimes  less  frequently,  at  the  most  once 
a-month,  and  to  a  whole  rail-full  of  communicants  at 
a  time  :  there  was  the  duet  between  the  parson  and 
the  clerk,  then  the  hurrying  from  the  church  into  the 
vestry  to  put  off  the  surplice,  and  the  returning  to  the 

*  Conybeare's  Church  Parties. 
N  n  2 


54^         THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 

church  to  preach  the  sermon  in  the  black  gown,  and 
then,  if  there  happened  to  be  a  celebration  of  Holy 
Communion,  returning  to  the  vestry  again  to  exchange 
the  black  gown  for  the  surplice. 

Not  the  least  strange  part  of  the  service  was 
the  singing  ;  all  Psalmody  was  objected  to  except 
the  Psalms  of  David,  or  such  as  were  taken  out  of 
the  Scriptures.  No  other  music  varied  the  service 
except  a  metrical  Psalm  or  two,  one  not  sung  where 
it  ought  to  be,  after  the  third  collect,  supplemented 
by  another  exactly  where  it  ought  not  to  be,  imme- 
diately before  the  sermon.  The  Old  Version  of  Stern- 
hold  and  Hopkins  held  its  own  till  it  was  so  bad  it 
could  be  tolerated  no  longer,  and  then  gave  way  to  the 
scarcely  better  New  Version  of  Tate  and  Brady,  accom- 
panied by  the  squealing  of  a  cracked  flageolet,  or  the 
growling  of  a  bass-viol " ;  in  short,  if  we  can  imagine 
a  state  of  things  where  there  was  a  general  agreement 
to  denude  the  services  of  everything  which  a  religious 
service  ought  to  be,  we  may  have  some  idea  of  the 
appearance  of  the  churches,  and  the  manner  of  con- 
ducting the  services  during  the  first  thirty  years  of 
the  present  century. 

Such  was  the  result  after  forty  years  of  Evangelical 
rule.  We  have  admitted  that  the  Evangelicals  w^ere 
men  of  piety,  of  zeal  and  earnestness,  and  that  they 
did  much  good  in  their  generation  ;  but  that  they  were 
men  of  great  intellect  or  learning,  or  large-heartedness, 
few  will  contend.  They  approved  themselves  mostly 
to  the  middle  class,  the  money- making  part  of  the 
community  ;  but  they  never  reached,  speaking  as  a 
whole,  the  highest  or  lowest  strata  of  society  ;  to  the 
former  they  were  too  narrow,  whilst  the  mere  sub- 

"  Conybeare's  Church  Parties. 


THE  EVANGELICAL  MOVEMENT. 


549 


jective  character  of  their  teaching  proved  too  unsub- 
stantial for  the  latter. 

And  yet  those  were  days  that  required  not  only  zeal 
and  earnestness,  but  in  a  special  degree,  a  large  heart 
and  a  discerning  and  organizing  intellect.  The  Eng- 
land of  the  early  part  of  this  century  was  not  the 
England  of  a  hundred  years  before  ;  its  manufacturing 
system  had  grown  up ;  its  great  towns  had  sprung  into 
existence.  So  that  here  was  a  new  sphere  of  duty 
and  of  usefulness  to  which  the  Church  must  adapt 
itself,  and  the  Evangelicals  were  not  equal  to  the  oc- 
casion. So  that  a  revival,  if  the  Church  was  not  en- 
tirely to  lapse  into  dissent,  was  absolutely  necessary. 
The  ground  which  had  been  lost  had  to  be  gained 
back  foot  by  foot,  and  inch  by  inch ;  and  the  strangest 
part  of  all  is  that  this  had  to  be  done  under  the 
strongest  opposition  of  the  Evangelicals  themselves. 
Let  us  look  back  only  a  few  years,  and  we  shall  see 
how  the  carrying  out  the  plainest  orders  of  the  Church, 
and  the  simplest  matters  of  ritual, — the  daily  and  even- 
ing prayer,  saints-day  services,  more  frequent  com- 
munions, destroying  the  unsightly  galleries,  lowering 
the  pews  and  throwing  them  open  to  rich  and  poor 
alike  ^,  the  preaching  in  a  surplice,  the  using  a  cre- 
dence-table, the  restoration  of  churches, — how  one  and 
all  these  things  had  to  be  fought  for  forty  years  ago 
under  quite  as  strong,  sometimes  stronger,  opposition 

'  A  friend  of  ours  visited  a  parish  where  this  kind  of  reformation  was 
proceeding  under  a  storm  of  opposition.  One  farmer  was  especially 
furious  at  the  removal  of  a  hideous  gallery  which,  for  the  last  fifty  years, 
had  blocked  up  a  beautiful  window.  "  I  have  heard  of  them  tyrants 
of  antikkity,"  said  he,  "who  burnt  people  because  they  would  not  agree 
with  their  notions ;  and  our  parson  is  just  as  bad,  burning  our  gallery." 
Another  said,  "  It  is  all  Popery  ;  waren't  them  new-fangled  pews  what 
they  used  to  call  monks'  cells.'"  (Conybeare's  Church  Parties.) 


550         THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  ERA. 

than  is  shewn  against  what  is  called  Ritualism  now, 
on  the  part  of  the  very  people  who  caused  or  sanc- 
tioned the  neglect. 

A  still  more  untoward  result  of  the  neglect  of  former 
times  remains  to  be  mentioned.  The  connexion  be- 
tween Church  and  State  implies  a  covenant  between 
the  two,  in  which,  if  one  fails,  the  other  is  absolved 
from  its  part  of  the  agreement.  During  the  first 
quarter  of  the  present  century  the  Church  was  not  in 
a  position  to  perform  its  part  of  the  covenant  towards 
the  State ;  the  consequence  is  that  the  State,  which 
from  time  immemorial  has  been  jealous  of  the  Church's 
prerogatives,  availed  itself  of  the  opportunity  thus  of- 
fered. Parliament,  just  at  the  very  time  when  it  ceased 
to  represent  the  Church,  took  upon  itself,  without  con- 
sulting Convocation,  to  legislate  for  the  Church  ;  and 
now  in  some  quarters  the  rights,  the  property,  the  dis- 
cipline, the  religion  of  the  Church  are  held  to  be  "  Par- 
liamentary," to  be  managed  as  Parliament  decrees. 


PART  VII. 


Zbc  dbnvch  of  the  [present  H)a^. 


CHAPTER  I. 

TRACTARIANISM  AND  RITUALISM. 

A  S  Evangelicalism  owed  its  origin  to  Cambridge,  so 
now,  when  that  movement  had  spent  its  force,  at 
a  time  when  Lord  Melbourne  and  his  colleagues  were 
flattering  themselves  that  they  could  do  what  they 
liked  with  the  Church,  and  had  actually  warned  it  to 
set  its  house  in  order,  a  new  revival  took  its  rise  at 
Oxford  ^  This  revival  was  not  antagonistic,  but  sup- 
plemental to  the  former ;  holding  quite  as  strongly 
the  necessity  of  Conversion,  Justification  by  Faith, 
and  the  supremacy  of  the  Scriptures ;  but  also  bring- 
ing into  prominence  those  doctrines  which  the  Evan- 
gelicals had  undervalued,  the  doctrine  of  the  Sacra- 
ments, of  Faith  shewing  itself  by  works,  of  Church 
authority,  and  the  Apostolical  Succession, 

The  intellectual  and  spiritual  activity  which  had 
deserted  the  Church  when  it  thought  itself  safe,  re- 
turned to  it  when  it  was  in  danger.  The  revival  was 
due  to  a  rapid  succession  of  events, — the  Repeal  of 
the  Test  and  Corporation  Acts  in  1828;  the  Eman- 
cipation Act  of  1829;  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832  ;  the 
still  more  recent  suppression  of  two  Irish  archbishop- 

•  "  Our  conviction  is  that  (we  can  scarcely  except  the  institution  of 
the  Methodists)  this  was  the  most  remarkable  and  important  event  in 
the  history  of  our  Church  and  our  country  since  the  Restoration." 
(Quarterly  Review,  Ixx.  333.) 


552 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


rics  and  eight  bishoprics  ^ ;  and  a  threatened  attack 
upon  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  shewed  too  plainly 
what  the  Church  might  expect  if  ever  it  became  a 
mere  appanage  of  the  State. 

A  Latitudinarian  spirit,  the  teaching  of  the  school 
of  Hales  and  Chillingworth  ^  which  had  produced  such 
pernicious  results  throughout  the  eighteenth  century, 
had  manifested  itself  within  the  Church,  Pamphlets 
were  in  wide  circulation  advocating  the  abolition  of 
the  Creeds,  and  especially  urging  the  abolition  of  the 
Athanasian  Creed  ;  the  removal  of  all  mention  of 
the  Blessed  Trinity,  of  the  doctrine  of  Baptismal  Re- 
generation, of  the  practice  of  Absolution  ^  In  January, 
1833,  Dr.  Arnold,  the  Head  Master  of  Rugby,  pub- 
lished his  Principles  of  Church  Reform,  which  aimed 
at  the  comprehension  of  all  sects  of  Christians,  ex- 
cept Quakers  and  Romanists,  in  the  National  Church. 
Episcopacy  was  to  be  maintained,  and  bishops  were 
to  hold  their  seats  in  the  House  of  Lords ;  all  minis- 
ters of  religion  were  to  be  episcopally  ordained ;  all 
services  were  to  take  place  in  the  parish  church  ; 
those  of  the  Established  Church  in  the  morning,  at 
other  times  of  the  day  those  of  the  Nonconformists. 

Already,  before  1833,  and  that  revival  which  we 
are  about  to  consider,  symptoms  had  manifested 
themselves  that  the  Church  was  beginning  to  awake 
to  its  danger.    To  build  a  church  was  a  very  com- 

There  were  at  the  time  in  the  Irish  Church  twenty-two  archbishops 
and  bishops,  though  it  only  numbered  a  million  members ;  in  England, 
numbering  at  least  eight  million  members,  there  were  only  twenty-six 
archbishops  and  bishops.  Several  bishops,  notably  Dr.  Blomfield,  ad- 
vocated the  suppression.  (Memoir  of  Bishop  Blomfield,  i.  182.) 
"=  See  p.  426. 

Palmer's  Narrative  of  Events  connected  with  the  publication  of  the 
"  Tracts  for  the  Times." 


TRACTARIANISM  AND  RITUALISM. 


553 


plicated  matter  (to  obtain  the  necessary  power  to 
build  a  church  at  Derby  cost  ^1,000");  to  subdi- 
vide a  parish  required  an  Act  of  Parliament.  But 
in  1818  the  "Incorporated  Church  Building  Society" 
was  founded,  and  this  to  a  great  extent  determined 
the  whole  revival  of  Church  usefulness  in  the  present 
century ;  its  effects  were  at  once  apparent,  for  whereas 
between  1801  and  1820  only  96,  between  182 1  and 
1830  as  many  as  308,  churches  were  consecrated. 

The  publication  in  1827  of  "The  Christian  Year," 
by  Mr.  Keble  (which  in  the  eyes  of  the  opponents  of 
Tractarianism  was  "  fons  et  origo  mali  V')  and  the  fa- 
vour with  which  it  was  received,  was  a  sign  of  a  grow- 
ing appreciation  of  Church  doctrine,  and  of  a  desire 
for  reviving  stricter  principles  within  the  Church. 

Between  1826  and  1828,  Dr.  Lloyd,  afterwards 
Bishop  of  Oxford,  was  Regius  Professor  of  Divinity, 
and  at  his  lectures  all  the  earlier  parties  in  the  re- 
vival (with  the  exception  of  Mr.  Keble,  who  had  left 
the  University  in  1823)  attended;  and  to  those  lec- 
tures Mr.  Oakley,  one  of  the  most  prominent  amongst 
its  earliest  members,  ascribes  the  commencement  of 
the  movement  : — "  I  do  remember,"  he  says,  "  to  have 
received  from  him  an  entirely  new  notion  of  Catholics 
and  Catholic  doctrine ;"  and,  "  I  have  no  doubt  his 
teaching  had  a  most  powerful  influence  upon  the 
movement." 

But  the  year  1833  time,  and  Oriel  Common- 

room  the  scene,  of  the  birth  of  the  Oxford  revival. 
It  found  a  voice,  on  July  14,  1833,  in  Keble's  famous 

'  Quarterly  Review,  July,  1874. 

'  A  friend,  visiting  Dr.  Newman  at  Littlemore,  said  "a  certain  book 
had  been  publicly  burnt  ;  what  is  it?"  Newman  answered,  "The  Chris- 
tian Year."    (Church  Quarterly,  April,  1881.) 


554 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


Assize  Sermon  at  St.  Mary's,  on  "  National  Apostasy:" 
"  I  have  always,"  says  Newman,  in  h\s  Apologia,  "con- 
sidered and  kept  that  day  as  the  start  of  the  religious 
movement  of  1833."  That  same  month  some  mem- 
bers of  the  University  met  at  Hadleigh  Rector}',  the 
residence  of  H.  J.  Rose,  chaplain  to  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbur)',  with  the  view  of  devising  some  remedy 
against  approaching  danger.  It  appeared  to  them  that 
the  action  of  Parliament  arose  from  a  mistaken  idea 
of  the  character  and  constitution  of  the  Church,  of  its 
legal  independence  from  the  State,  and  the  divine  com- 
mission and  authority  of  its  clergy ;  and  they  agreed 
that  the  first  step  was  to  revive  a  practical  recognition 
of  the  truths  set  forth  in  the  Preface  to  the  Ordinal. 
The  first-fruits  of  that  meeting  were  the  "  Tracts  for 
the  Times." 

On  their  return  to  Oxford,  it  was  agreed  to  make 
a  united  effort  to  promote  these  two  points  :  i.  the 
firm  and  practical  maintenance  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Apostolical  Succession ;  2.  the  preservation,  in  its  in- 
tegrity, of  the  Prayer- Book. 

In  the  autumn  of  the  same  year  an  appeal  was  made 
to  the  public,  suggesting  the  formation  of  an  "  Associa- 
tion of  Friends  of  the  Church,"  its  objects  being  :  i.  To 
maintain  pure  and  inviolate  the  doctrine,  the  discipline, 
and  the  serv^ices  of  the  Church ;  that  is,  to  withstand 
all  change  w^hich  involves  the  denial  of,  or  departure 
from,  primitive  practice  in  religious  offices,  or  innova- 
tion upon  the  Apostolical  prerogatives,  order,  and 
commission  of  Bishops,  Priests,  and  Deacons.  2.  To 
afford  Churchmen  an  opportunity  of  exchanging  their 
sentiments,  and  co  -  operating  together  on  a  large 
scale. 

One  of  the  first  results  of  the  appeal  was  an  ad- 


TRACTARIANISM  AND  RITUALISM. 


555 


dress  signed  by  about  7,000  of  the  clergy;  another 
was  a  declaration  of  attachment  to  the  Church  signed 
by  upwards  of  230,000  heads  of  families,  and  pre- 
sented to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  in  May,  1834. 
From  these  two  events  may  be  dated  the  turn  in 
the  tide  which  had  threatened  to  overwhelm  the 
Church  ^. 

The  principal  parties  in  the  early  movement  were 
Keble,  Newman,  Percival,  (the  present  Sir)  William 
Palmer,  Isaac  Williams,  and  Hurrell  Froude ;  and  in 
some  degree  Mr.  Hugh  Rose  of  Cambridge  Uni- 
versity. 

In  1833  was  published  the  first  Series  of  the 
"  Tracts  for  the  Times,"  which  gave  rise  to  the 
name  of  Tractarians 

The  party  grew.  Dr.  Pusey  was  not  "  fully  asso- 
ciated with  the  movement  till  1835  and  1836,  when  he 

8  The  above  account  is  derived  from  the  letter  of  Mr.  Percival  (who 
was  one  of  the  three  Oxford  men  who  met  at  Hadleigh)  to  the  Irish 
Ecclesiastical  Journal. 

We  cannot  refrain  from  quoting  a  few  brief  extracts  from  a  beautiful 
poem,  entitled  "Origin  of  the  Tracts  for  the  Times,"  by  Isaac  Williams. 
"  It  was  before  the  summer  holidays, 
At  noon  I  well  remember,  as  we"  (he  and  Hurrell  Froude)  "sat 
Conversing  in  my  college-rooms"  (Trinity),  .  .  .  "my  friend 
Lately  returned  from  genial  Italy; 
Death  in  his  frame  and  cheek,  and  to  his  eye 
Lent  more  than  its  own  brightness ;  he  was  one 
I  lov'd  ;  ah,  would  that  I  had  loved  him  more, 
For  he  was  worthy  of  a  good  man's  love. 
'  Yes,'  said  he,  ....  '  We  must  be  up 

And  moving,  now  at  once  ;  and  when  our  friend"  (Newman) 

"  Shall  have  return'd  from  ancient  Sicily' — 

He  spake  of  one  whom  he  had  left  behind 

Bound  for  the  classic  shores  of  Syracuse — 

'  Tracts  we  must  have,  and  by  what  means  we  can 

Launch  them  abroad, — short  Tracts, — we  must  begin, 

And  you  too,  you  must  aid,  and  with  your  verse.' " 


556  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 

published  his  tract  on  Baptism,  and  started  the  Libra7y 
of  the  Fathers^!'  In  1836,  in  opposition  to  Dr.  Wise- 
man, appeared  Mr.  Newman's  Prophetical  Office,  and 
in  1837  his  Essay  on  Justification ;  in  1838,  Froude's 
Remains,  and  in  1840,  Faber's  Tracts  on  the  Church 
and  her  Office.  Much  alarm  and  anger  was  aroused 
by  the  publication  of  Froude's  Remains.  He  died 
at  the  early  age  of  33.  No  doubt  his  youthful  and 
fervent  spirit  had  sometimes  led  him  into  hasty  ex- 
pressions concerning  the  Church  of  Rome ;  but  it  is 
only  fair  to  his  memory  that  he  should  be  judged,  not 
from  what  others  said  of  him,  but  from  his  own  words, 
written  shortly  before  his  death  :  "  If  I  were  to  assign 
my  reason  for  belonging  to  the  Church  of  England 
before  any  other  community,  it  would  be  simply  this, 
that  she  has  retained  an  apostolic  clergy,  and  enacts 
no  sinful  terms  of  communion ;  whereas,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  Romanists,  though  retaining  an  apostolic 
clergy,  do  exact  sinful  terms  of  communion ;  and,  on 
the  other,  no  other  religious  community  has  retained 
such  a  clergy." 

The  first  time  the  Tractarians,  as  a  body,  appeared 
upon  the  scene  was  in  1836,  in  connexion  with  men 
of  all  shades  of  opinion,  in  opposition  to  the  appoint- 
ment by  Lord  Melbourne  of  Dr.  Hampden,  who  had 
been  condemned  by  the  University  for  unsound  doc- 
trine, to  the  Regius  Professorship  of  Divinity.  Their 
influence  began  to  shew  itself  by  the  appointment  of 
such  men  as  Denison,  Longley,  and  Thirlwall  to  the 
episcopate. 

In  1 84 1,  the  contest  for  the  Professorship  of  Poetry 
between  Isaac  Williams  and  Mr.  (afterwards  Arch- 

'  Newman's  Apologia,  p.  136. 


TRACTARIANISM  AND  RITUALISM. 


557 


deacon)  Garbett  was  decided  on  purely  theological 
grounds  ;  and  the  latter,  of  whom  as  a  poet  no  one 
ever  heard  then  or  since,  was  elected  over  the  former, 
who  is  well  known  to  fame  as  the  author  of  the  Bap- 
tistery and  Cathedral,  but  who  was  one  of  the  original 
Tractarians. 

The  same  year  the  Tracts  were  abruptly  terminated, 
mainly  in  deference  to  the  wish  of  Dr.  Bagot,  Bishop 
of  Oxford,  by  the  publication  of  No.  90,  entitled, 
"  Remarks  on  certain  Passages  in  the  Thirty-nine 
Articles,"  of  which,  although  it  was  at  first  published 
anonymously,  Mr.  Newman,  in  a  letter  on  March  16 
to  the  Vice-Chancellor,  avowed  himself  the  author. 
The  object  of  the  Tract  was,  "  to  shew  that  our  Ar- 
ticles neither  contradict  anything  Catholic,  nor  are 
meant  to  condemn  anything  in  early  Christianity,  even 
though  not  Catholic,  but  only  the  later  definite  system 
in  the  Church  of  Rome^" 

But  we  will  give  Mr. Newman's  own  version  :  "The 
main  thesis  of  my  Essay  was  this ;  the  Articles  do  not 
oppose  Catholic  teaching,  they  but  partially  oppose 
Roman  dogma ;  they,  for  the  most  part,  oppose  the 
dominant  errors  of  Rome.  And  the  problem  was  to 
draw  the  line  as  to  what  they  allowed,  and  what  they 
condemned.  Such  being  the  object  which  I  had  in 
view,  what  were  my  prospects  of  widening  and  de- 
fining their  meaning  ?  The  prospect  was  encouraging  ; 
there  was  no  doubt  at  all  of  the  elasticity  of  the 
Articles.  To  take  a  preliminary  instance ;  the  four- 
teenth was  presumed  by  one  party  to  be  Lutheran, 
by  another  Calvinistic,  though  the  two  interpretations 
were  contradictory  to  each  other ;  why,  then,  should 

^  Pusey's  Letter  to  Jelf. 


55^  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


not  Other  Articles  be  drawn  up  with  a  vagueness  of  an 
equally  intense  character  ?" 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Hebdomadal  Council  on  March 
15,  a  resolution  was  passed,  that  "  The  modes  of  inter- 
pretation, such  as  are  suggested  in  the  said  Tract, 
evading,  rather  than  explaining,  the  sense  of  the 
Thirty-nine  Articles,  and  reconciling  subscription  to 
them  with  the  adoption  of  errors  which  they  were 
designed  to  counteract,  defeat  the  object,  and  are  in- 
consistent with  the  due  observance  of  the  above- 
named  statute,  i.e.  the  statute  which  requires  subscrip- 
tion to  the  Thirty-nine  Articles." 

The  Tracts  were  discontinued ;  but  their  work  was 
done.  Long- forgotten  truths  concerning  the  nature 
and  Apostolical  foundation  of  the  English  Church, 
were  brought  to  light ;  a  higher  tone  of  feeling  per- 
vaded society ;  a  taste  for  theological  learning  mani- 
fested itself  among  the  clergy,  and  an  increased  de- 
votion amongst  the  laity;  a  more  reverent  celebra- 
tion of  Divine  Service,  more  frequent  Communions, 
and  an  improvement  in  Church  music  everywhere 
followed. 

The  movement  communicated  itself  to  Cambridge, 
where  had  been  founded  in  1838  the  Camden  Society, 
under  the  auspices  of  which  arose  the  Ecclesiological 
Society,  having  for  its  object  the  "  promotion  of  the 
study  of  Christian  art  and  antiquities,  more  especially 
in  whatever  relates  to  the  architecture,  arrangement, 
and  decoration  of  churches ;  a  similar  society  had 
already  been  started  in  Oxford,  though  its  first  public 
meeting  was  not  held  till  March,  1839. 

In  1 84 1  was  founded  the  Motett  Society,  for  the 

''  Apologia.  The  Tracts  written  by  Mr.  Newman  were,  i,  2,  6,  7,  8,  10, 
II,  19,  20,  21,  34,  38,  41,  45,  47,  71,  73,  75,  79,  82,  83,  8s,  88,  90. 


TRACTARIANISM  AND  RITUALISM. 


559 


purpose  of  reviving  "  the  study  and  practice  of  the 
ancient  choral  music  of  the  Church Thus  the  ex- 
ternals of  Divine  Service,  the  beauties  of  religious 
architecture,  and  church  music,  were  brought  into 
prominence. 

At  Oxford,  Newman  was  Vicar  of  St.  Mary's,  and  in 
that  position,  through  his  transcendent  ability  and  his 
simple  piety,  he  was  able  to  exercise  an  immense  in- 
fluence amongst  the  Undergraduates.  Whence  arose 
the  great  power  of  his  sermons,  we  may  form  some 
idea  from  the  words  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  himself  an 
Undergraduate  of  the  University  at  the  time.  His 
"  manner  in  the  pulpit  was  one  which,  if  you  considered 
it  in  its  separate  parts,  would  lead  you  to  arrive  at 
a  very  unsatisfactory  conclusion.  There  was  not  much 
change  in  the  inflexion  of  his  voice  ;  action  there  was 
none :  his  sermons  were  read,  and  his  eyes  were 
always  on  his  book  ;  .  .  .  but  you  take  the  man  as 
a  whole,  and  there  was  a  stamp  and  a  seal  upon  him  ; 
there  was  a  solemn  sweetness  and  music  in  his  tone, 
there  was  a  completeness  in  the  figure  taken  together 
with  the  tone  and  the  manner,  which  made  even  his 
delivery,  such  as  I  have  described  it,  and  though  ex- 
clusively with  written  sermons,  singularly  attractive." 

On  May  19,  1841,  was  laid  at  Oxford  the  founda- 
tion of  the  "  Martyrs'  Memorial,"  in  accordance  with 
a  proposal  issued  from  Magdalen  Hall,  on  Nov.  17, 
1838,  that,  in  order  to  counteract  the  Tractarian  move- 
ment, a  memorial  should  be  erected  to  Cranmer,  Lati- 
mer, and  Ridley,  "who  had  so  large  a  share  in  re- 
storing our  own  branch  of  the  Catholic  Church  to 

'  In  1852,  an  amalgamation  was  effected  between  the  Ecclesiological 
Society  and  the  Motett  Choir,  which  continued  till  1862,  when,  by  an 
amicable  arrangement,  it  was  dissevered. 


56o 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


primitive  orthodoxy,  and  who  for  the  maintenance  of 
the  Scriptural  truth  which  they  embodied  in  its  Ar- 
ticles and  other  formularies,  suffered  death  in  this 
city. 

In  1843,  Dr.  Pusey  preached  the  sermon  entitled, 
Holy  Communion  a  Comfort  for  the  Penitent,  for  which 
he  was  suspended  for  two  years  by  the  University  ; 
after  his  suspension,  he  preached  another  sermon,  The 
Presence  of  Christ  i7i  the  Holy  Eticharist,  containing 
precisely  the  same  doctrine  which  had  been  con- 
demned before. 

But  Newman  felt  that  his  place  in  the  movement 
was  lost.  He  describes  his  position  :  "  Posted  up  by 
the  Marshal  on  the  buttery-hatch  of  every  college 
of  my  University,  after  the  manner  of  discommoned 
pastry-cooks ;  and  when,  in  every  part  of  the  country, 
and  every  class  of  society,  through  every  organ  and 
opportunity  of  opinion,  in  newspapers,  in  periodicals, 
at  meetings,  in  pulpits,  at  dinner-tables,  in  coffee- 
rooms,  in  railway-carriages,  I  was  denounced  as  a 
traitor,  who  had  laid  his  train,  and  was  detected  in 
the  very  act  of  firing  it  against  the  time-honoured 
Establishment "The  bishops,  one  after  another, 
began  to  charge  against  me."  So  he  exchanged  his 
important  station  at  St.  Mary's  for  the  quiet  retire- 
ment of  Littlemore,  near  Oxford.  Then  came  the  af- 
fair of  the  Jerusalem  bishopric  :  "  This  was  the  third 
blow,  which  finally  shattered  my  faith  in  the  Anglican 
Church.  That  Church  was  not  only  forbidding  any 
sympathy  or  concurrence  with  the  Church  of  Rome, 
but  it  actually  was  courting  an  inter-communion  with 
Protestant  Prussia,  and  the  heresy  of  the  Orientals 

"  Apologia  per  vita  sua. 
°  For  Jerusalem  bishopric,  vide  Appendix  D. 


TRACTARIANISM  AND  RITUALISM. 


This  was  more  than  the  sensitive  nature  of  Newman 
could  bear,  and  snapped  the  last  thread  which  bound 
him  to  the  English  Church.  In  February,  1843, 
"  I  made  a  formal  retractation  of  all  the  hard  things 
which  I  had  said  acjainst  the  Church  of  Rome.  In 
September,  I  resigned  the  living  of  St.  Mary's,  Little- 
more  included  As  I  advanced,  my  difficulties 

so  cleared  away  that  I  ceased  to  speak  of  the  Roman 
Catholics,  and  boldly  called  them  Catholics'^!' 

Events  now  followed  one  another  rapidly.  In 
February,  1845,  Ward's  "Ideal  of  a  Christian  Church" 
was  condemned  in  the  Oxford  Convocation  by  a  ma- 
jority of  392  out  of  777  votes,  and  Mr.  Ward  was 
deprived  of  his  degrees  by  a  smaller  majority  of 
38  ;  Mr.  Gladstone,  Dr.  Hook,  and  Dr.  Pusey  siding 
with  him,  and  Mr.,  now  Archdeacon,  Denison  pro- 
testing against  the  whole  proceeding.  In  April, 
the  country  was  thrown  into  a  flame  about  Sir 
Robert  Peel's  grant  of  ;^30,ooo  a-year  to  Maynooth. 
In  June,  followed  the  condemnation  by  Sir  H,  Jenner 
Fust  of  Mr.  Oakley,  Incumbent  of  Margaret -street 
chapel,  for  claiming  to  hold,  as  distinct  from  teaching, 
all  the  doctrines  of  Rome.  On  November  i,  Mr.  New- 
man and  Mr.  Oakley  were  received  into  the  Roman 
communion  in  the  chapel  of  Oscott,  by  Dr. Wiseman; 
Ward,  Faber,  and  other  less  conspicuous  names  joined 
in  quick  succession  the  same  Church.  On  November 
30  of  that  eventful  year.  Dr.  Wilberforce,  at  the  age  of 
forty,  was  consecrated  to  the  see  of  Oxford  :  who  can 
tell  how  the  appointment,  a  few  years  earlier,  of  such 
a  bishop,  with  his  intense  sympathy,  his  knowledge 
of,  and  influence  over,  men,  might  have  directed  the 
course  of  the  whole  movement  ? 

"  Apologia. 
O  O 


562 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


Meanwhile,  the  work  was  meeting  with  great  success 
in  various  parts  of  the  land.  Dr.  Hook  was  carrying 
on  a  great  work  in  Leeds ;  Mr.  Oakley  had  done  the 
same  in  London.  The  restoration  of  churches,  a  thing 
long  unknown,  became  a  frequent  occurrence.  A  great 
progress  towards  an  extended  colonial  episcopate,  which 
was  followed  by  the  organization  of  the  Colonial  Bi- 
shops' Fund,  ensued.  Lonsdale,  Gilbert,  Bagot,  Wil- 
berforce,  and  Turner ;  such  were  the  men  who  were 
raised  to  the  episcopate. 

The  movement,  of  course,  had  its  drawbacks ;  and 
the  loss  of  such  a  man  as  Newman  did  for  the  time 
incalculable  harm.  The  Oxford  revival  did  not  aim  at 
approximation  to  Rome,  except  where  Rome  approxi- 
mated to  truth.  Newman,  as  he  tells  us  himself, 
had  been  brought  up  in  exactly  opposite  principles ;  so 
had  Ward,  Oakley,  and  Faber ;  (the  same  was  the  case 
in  the  second  secession  after  the  Gorham  Judgment, 
with  Manning,  Dodsworth,  the  two  Wilberforces,  and 
Allies ;)  if  on  their  journey  from  Clapham  to  Rome, 
they  touched  at  Oxford,  it  was  only  as  an  intermediate 
station Others,  in  like  manner,  have  left  us  in  search 
of  an  ideal  faith^and,  not  finding  it  as  they  expected, 
have  returned  to  us  again.  Newman  set  up  his  own 
ideal  of  a  Church  ;  so  he  wandered  about  from  faith  to 
faith,  till  he  found  a  home,  and  let  us  hope  rest,  in 
Rome,  as  his  younger  brother  did  in  Rationalism. 

In  1847,  Lord  John  Russell,  who  in  the  previous 
year  had  succeeded  Sir  Robert  Peel  as  Prime  Min- 
ister, appointed  Dr.  Hampden  to  the  see  of  Hereford, 
"to  strengthen,"  as  he  said,  "the  Protestant  character 
of  our  Church,  so  seriously  threatened  of  late  by  many 
defections  to  the  Church  of  Rome ;"  thirteen  of  the 
bishops  remonstrated  against  the  appointment,  and 

°  Gleanings  from  Gladstone. 


TRACTARIANISM  AND  RITUALISM. 


an  attempt  was  made,  but  without  success,  against  its 
confirmation  in  Bow  Church. 

Yet  the  Church,  instead  of  losing,  gained  ground. 
A  scheme  was  started  for  a  combination  of  Churchmen 
for  the  defence  of  the  Church,  and  in  1849  the  "  Lon- 
don Union"  was  estabHshed.  On  its  committee  were 
enrolled  the  names  of  Judges  and  Regius  Professors, 
Peers  and  members  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and 
distinguished  members  of  the  Oxford,  and  the  old 
High  Church  party;  its  rules  were  submitted  to  Dr. 
Blomfield,  Bishop  of  London,  who  not  only  signified 
his  approval,  but  allowed  himself  to  be  considered  the 
Patron  of  the  Society. 

On  March  8,  1850,  the  Privy  Council  Judgment  in 
the  famous  Gorham  case  was  delivered,  which,  as  his 
diocesan,  the  Bishop  of  Exeter  refused,  on  account  of 
his  objection  to  Mr.  Gorham's  views  on  Baptismal 
Regeneration,  to  give  him  institution,  empowered  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  to  do  so. 

In  Michaelmas  of  the  same  year.  Pope  Pius  IX., 
elated  by  the  few  converts  who  had  left  the  English 
Church  for  that  of  Rome,  thought  the  time  propitious 
for  re-establishing  the  Papal  Hierarchy  in  England, 
with  English  titles  to  their  new  sees.  At  the  be- 
ginning of  the  seventeenth  century  the  chief  pastor 
of  the  Romanists  in  England  was  an  Arch-priest ; 
but  afterwards,  until  1850,  they  had  been  governed 
by  vicars  apostolic,  at  first  only  one,  but  later  two, 
then  four,  and  then  eight.  Pope  Pius  IX.  divided 
England  into  twelve  dioceses,  and  appointed  Cardi- 
nal Wiseman,  an  Englishman  on  his  father's,  and  an 
Irishman  on  his  mother's  side  (who  was  already  well 
known  in  England  as  Bishop  of  Melipotamus  in  par- 
tibus  in/idelium),  Archbishop  of  Westminster.  Look- 

002 


554  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


ing  at  the  matter  at  this  distance  of  time  it  appears 
of  little  consequence  ;  but  not  so  then.  The  title  of 
Cardinal  brought  back  unpleasant  reminiscences.  The 
Prime  Minister,  Lord  J.  Russell,  wrote  an  intemperate 
letter  to  the  Bishop  of  Durham,  in  which  he  denounced 
the  movement  in  itself  as  "a  pretension  over  the  su- 
premacy of  England,  .  .  .  inconsistent  with  the  Queen's 
supremacy,  with  the  rights  of  our  bishops  and  clergy, 
and  with  the  spiritual  independence  of  our  country  as 
asserted  even  in  the  Roman  Catholic  times,"  He 
spoke  of  "  the  mummeries  of  superstition,"  and  "  the 
endeavours  which  are  now  making  to  confine  the  in- 
tellect and  enslave  the  soul ;"  these  expressions,  whilst 
the  Roman  Catholics  regarded  them  as  directed  against 
themselves,  were  really  directed  against  the  Tracta- 
rians,  whom  he  described  in  the  same  letter  as  "un- 
worthy sons  of  the  Church  of  England,"  and  "  leading 
their  flocks  step  by  step  to  the  verge  of  the  precipice." 
Never  was  a  more  bitter  controversy  excited.  There 
were  public  meetings,  protests,  and  denunciations ; 
there  were  petitions  to  the  queen,  and  violent  articles 
in  the  press  ;  the  old  cry  of  "  No  popery  "  was  raised ; 
every  Sunday  mobs  attacked  the  church  of  St.  Bar- 
nabas, Pimlico,  to  which  the  Prime  Minister's  letter 
was  supposed  to  refer,  which  had  been  consecrated 
on  the  iith  of  June  of  that  year,  and  had  adopted 
a  choral  service,  a  cross  on  the  altar,  and  the  east- 
ward position.  The  bishops  shared  in  the  general 
alarm  ;  and  although  the  parishioners  of  St.  Barnabas 
were  strongly  attached  to  their  incumbent,  though  the 
churchwardens  tried  to  dissuade  the  bishop  from  the 
course,  and  a  legal  opinion  was  obtained  in  favour  of 
the  ritual,  the  bishop  called  on  Mr.  Bennett",  the  in- 

p  Afterwards  the  defendant  in  Sheppard  v.  Bennett. 


TRACTARIANISM  AND  RITUALISM. 


cumbent,  to  redeem  a  promise  which  he  had  made, 
and  to  resign ;  which  Mr.  Bennett  accordingly  did  in 
March,  1851. 

But  the  matter  did  not  end  thus.  Soon  after  the 
meeting  of  Padiament,  Lord  J.  Russell  brought  in 
a  Bill  against  the  assumption  by  the  Roman  Catholic 
bishops  of  any  title  taken  from  places  in  the  United 
Kingdom.  Churchmen,  as  well  as  Roman  Catholics, 
objected  to  the  measure ;  the  "  Ecclesiastical  Titles 
Bill "  was  opposed  on  all  sides ;  some  thought  it  went 
too  far,  others  not  far  enough  ;  in  the  midst  of  the 
agitation  the  Prime  Minister  (although  for  another 
reason)  resigned,  but,  after  various  futile  attempts 
had  been  made  to  form  another  ministry,  returned  to 
power ;  the  Bill,  under  the  same  opposition,  was  re- 
sumed, and  various  alterations  were  made ;  but  even- 
tually (after  the  government  which  proposed  it  had 
been  defeated  over  and  over  again)  it  passed  simply 
as  an  Act  against  the  public  and  ostentatious  assump- 
tion of  illegal  titles ;  but  no  practical  change  was  ef- 
fected :  Cardinal  Wiseman  remained  Archbishop  of 
Westminster,  the  other  Roman  Catholics  continued 
their  English  titles,  and  in  1871  the  Ecclesiastical 
Titles  Bill  was  repealed. 

The  object  of  Tractarianism  had  been  to  restore 
the  Catholic  doctrines  of  the  English  Church,  and  it 
was  eminently  successful  amongst  the  higher  and  edu- 
cated classes  :  to  raise  its  ceremonial,  and  to  adapt  it 
to  the  feelings  and  requirements  of  the  masses,  now 
became  the  object  of  those  whom  society  has  named 
Ritualists. 

Ritualism,  as  expressive  of  the  new  movement,  is  an 
inexact  term  (perhaps  ultra- Ritualism  would  be  more 
expressive),  for  there  must  always  be  a  certain  amount 


566 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


of  Ritualism  in  connexion  with  the  Church ;  the  spire 
with  "  its  silent  finger  pointing  towards  heaven ;"  the 
font  at  the  entrance  of  the  church  ;  the  elevated  altar  ; 
the  triple  aisles  ;  the  cross  of  the  transept ;  all  embody 
mysteries  of  the  faith,  all  are  eminently  Ritualistic. 
And  again,  what  is  considered  Ritualistic  at  one  time, 
passes  unnoticed  at  another ;  for  instance,  preaching 
in  the  surplice  at  the  commencement  of  the  Tractarian 
movement  was  considered  Ritualistic,  and  created  se- 
rious riots  in  Exeter,  whilst  in  the  present  day  it  is 
frequently  used  in  dissenting  chapels.  However,  the 
word  Ritualism  is  familiar,  and  that  is  sufficient  for 
our  present  purpose. 

We  have  seen  in  a  former  chapter  that  the  cere- 
monial of  the  Church  had,  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
greatly  deteriorated.  Breaches  in  the  law  were  too 
common  to  excite  comment ;  portions  of  the  rubric 
had  been  so  long  neglected  that  their  very  existence 
was  forgotten,  and  the  clerg}^man  who  restored  them 
was  regarded  as  an  innovator. 

It  was  the  object  of  Ritualism  to  remedy  this,  to 
carry  out  the  Apostolic  precepts  :  "  Let  all  things  be 
done  decently  and  in  order "let  all  things  be  done 
unto  edifying and  "to  the  glory  of  God^;"  and  to 
restore  what  was  still  lawful,  even  though  it  had  been 
long  neglected.  The  question  naturally  arose,  what 
is  the  proper  mode  of  conducting  divine  service  ? 
what  is  the  prescribed  vestment  for  the  clergyman  ? 

Every  one  knows  that  there  is  not  a  word  in  the 
Prayer-Book  prescribing  the  use  of  the  black  gown ; 
but  many  people  forget  that  there  is  no  mention  even 
of  a  surplice  from  one  end  of  the  Prayer-Book  to  the 
other.    There  is  only  one  place,  and  that  is  at  the 

1  I  Cor.  xiv.  40.  '  Ibid.  26.  '  Ibid.  x.  21. 


TRACTARIANISM  AND  RITUALISM. 


very  commencement  of  the  Prayer- Book,  which  pre- 
scribes the  proper  vestment  :  "  And  here  it  is  to  be 
noted  that  such  ornaments  of  the  Church  and  of  the 
Ministers  thereof,  at  all  Times  of  their  Ministration, 
shall  be  retained  and  be  in  use,  as  were  in  this  Church 
of  England,  by  the  Authority  of  Parliament,  in  the 
second  year  of  the  reign  of  King  Edward  VI." 

As  to  the  vestments  of  the  minister,  the  first  Prayer- 
Book  of  King  Edward  VI.  contains  two  rubrics.  One 
of  these  directs  the  use  of  the  surplice  in  ordinary  min- 
istrations, and  that  "  graduates  where  they  do  preach, 
should  use  such  hood  as  pertaineth  to  their  several 
degrees."  The  other  relates  to  the  habits  at  the  cele- 
bration of  Holy  Communion  :  "  Upon  the  day  and  at 
the  time  appointed  for  the  ministration  of  the  Holy 
Communion,  the  Priest  that  shall  execute  the  holy 
ministry,  shall  put  upon  him  the  vesture  appointed 
for  that  ministration,  that  is  to  say,  a  White  Albe  plain 
with  a  Vestment  or  Cope.  And  where  there  be  many 
Priests  or  Deacons,  so  many  shall  be  ready  to  help 
the  Priest  in  the  ministration  as  shall  be  requisite, 
and  shall  have  upon  them  likewise  the  vesture  ap- 
pointed for  the  ministering,  that  is  to  say,  albes  with 
tunicles." 

There  seemed  to  be  no  difficulty  in  understanding 
such  a  plain  rubric  before  the  Law  Courts  undertook  to 
explain  it.  In  the  first  year  of  King  Edward  VI.  there 
had  been  an  excessive  ceremonial,  unsanctioned  by  the 
use  of  the  Primitive  Church,  whereas  at  a  later  period 
there  had  been  a  fault  in  the  opposite  direction  ;  the 
Catholic  spirit  of  the  English  Church,  at  the  last  re- 
view of  the  Prayer- Book,  chose  therefore  the  second 
year  of  King  Edward  VI.  as  the  mean  between  excess 
and  defect.    In  1857,  in  the  case  of  Liddell  z*.  Wes- 


568 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


terton*,  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council 
decided,  that  "the  same  dresses  and  the  same  utensils 
or  articles  which  were  tised  tmdcr  the  First  Prayer- 
Book  of  Edward  VI.  may  still  be  used."  This  de- 
cision had  also  the  sanction  of  the  Court  of  Arches. 

In  the  case  of  Elphinstone  v.  Purchas,  the  Dean  of 
Arches  asserted,  in  February,  1870,  that  according  to 
the  plain  meaning  of  the  rubric,  those  vestments  were 
legal,  and  might  lawfully  be  worn  ;  taking  the  principle 
of  interpretation  laid  down  by  Lord  Coke,  "  loquendum 
est  ut  Vulgus,"  he  could  not  understand  how  people  of 
common  sense  and  ordinary  intelligence,  unless  biassed, 
as  the  Puritan  party  was,  could  hesitate  in  its  interpre- 
tation, especially  as  the  Privy  Council  in  Liddell  v.  Wes- 
terton  had  obviously  meant  that  those  vestments  may  "  still 
be  used."  He  added,  "  I  am  convinced  that  if  the  sub- 
ject to  which  the  language  refers  were  not  one  which 
excites  some  of  the  strongest  passions  and  feelings  of 
our  nature,  but  was  one  of  an  ordinary,  indifferent,  and 
civil  character,  no  dispute  would  ever  have  been  raised, 
with  respect  to  the  plain  and  literal  meaning  of  that 
language." 

The  Privy  Council  having  decided  on  the  legality 
of  the  vestments,  two  years  afterwards  Ritualism  took 
its  rise,  not  in  the  aristocratic  parishes  of  the  West 
end  of  London,  but  amidst  the  dens  of  vice  in  Wap- 
ping  and  Ratcliffe  Highway,  in  the  parish  of  St. 

'  In  this  case  it  was  decided  also  that  the  Holy  Table  must  be  of  wood, 
and  moveable.  In  the  celebrated  stone-altar  case  with  regard  to  the 
church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  at  Cambridge,  it  was  decided  that  the  cir- 
cumstance of  its  being  let  into  the  wall  rendered  it  no  longer  a  table  in  the 
sense  of  a  Communion-table.  It  was,  however,  decided  in  the  Liddell 
"  case,"  that  a  credence-table,  and  the  cross  over  the  altar,  as  an  emblem 
of  Faith,  also  different  colours  according  to  the  Church's  seasons,  were 
lawful. 


TRACTARIANISM  AND  RITUALISM. 


George's-in-the-East,  which,  from  the  first  building  of 
its  church,  had  been  in  a  constant  state  of  warfare 
with  its  rectors.  As  his  predecessors  had  left  little 
mark  for  good  on  the  parish,  the  rector,  Mr.  Bryan 
King,  determined  to  try  the  effect  on  the  people  of 
a  more  ornate  service ;  he  increased  the  number  of 
communions,  had  choral  celebrations,  used  altar-lights, 
and  wore  linen  vestments.  In  a  short  time  he  ga- 
thered around  him  300  communicants,  a  thing  hitherto 
unheard  of  in  that  ungodly  neighbourhood.  But  the 
more  religion  increased,  the  more  the  trade  of  the  gin- 
palaces  and  the  infamous  houses  fell  off ;  this  was 
more  than  could  be  tolerated  ;  an  organised  conspiracy 
to  interrupt  the  services  was  set  on  foot ;  and  Sunday 
after  Sunday  St.  George's  Church  became  the  scene 
of  rioting  and  blasphemy.  The  police  magistrates 
might  easily  have  put  down  such  lawless  profanity  ; 
but  this  was  not  done.  So  the  rector  resigned ;  and 
what  was  the  consequence  Ritualism  had  suffered 
that  which  gives  an  impetus  to  every  religious  move- 
ment, persecution  ;  the  St.  George's  riots  gave  it  an 
advertisement ;  the  movement  spread  over  England  ; 
whilst  in  the  very  worst  parts  of  Wapping,  the  church 
of  St.  Peter's,  London  Docks,  was  built ;  the  services 
were  well  supported ;  and  its  vicar,  the  late  Mr.  Low- 
der,  could  parade  the  streets,  bearing  the  stations  of 
the  cross,  with  the  respect  of  the  assembled  crowds. 
The  legality  of  the  ornaments",  as  interpreted  by 

"  The  Judicial  Committee,  in  Liddell  v.  Westerton,  ruled  that  the  word 
"  ornaments  "  is  not  to  be  taken  in  its  ordinary  sense  ;  but  in  the  larger 
sense  of  the  word  "  ornamentum,"  which,  according  to  Forcellini's  Dic- 
tionary, is  used/r^?  quorumque  apparatii  seu  implc7nenio,  and  that  all  the 
articles  used  in  the  performance  of  the  services  and  rites  of  the  Churchy 
vestments,  books,  cloths,  chalices,  patens,  and  the  like,  are  ornaments 
within  the  meaning  of  the  rubric. 


570  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


the  Privy  Council,  being  considered  beyond  ques- 
tion, Ritualism  met  with  hearty  enthusiasm  amongst 
classes  of  the  community  which  the  Church  revival 
had  not  hitherto  reached,  and  was  adopted  in  many 
parishes,  mainly  in  compliance  with  the  wishes  of 
the  parishioners".  That  a  movement  so  at  variance 
with  what  had  long  been  customary  met  with  strong 
opposition,  need  hardly  be  said, — changes  which  every 
one  now  confesses  to  be  beneficial,  shared  the  same 
fate.  Wesley  and  his  followers  were  accused  of  popery, 
and  in  danger  of  their  lives ;  Scott  and  Romaine  were 
charged  with  Antinomianism  ;  Dr.  Pusey  was  silenced 
at  Oxford  for  preaching  High  Church  doctrine ;  so 
also  had  Romaine  been  silenced  fifty  years  before,  for 
preaching  Low  Church  doctrine  from  the  same  pulpit. 

In  our  notice  of  Ritualism,  we  need  not  be  led  away 
by  the  idiosyncrasies  of  individual  Ritualists,  or  by  the 
various  "articles"  charged  in  Hebbert  v.  Purchas ; 
we  have  a  fair  statement  of  the  case  in  a  resolution 
adopted  at  the  annual  meeting  of  the  English  Church 
Union  in  1875,  which  lays  down  the  points  which  Ri- 
tualists wish  to  revive,  and  the  "  limits  beyond  which 
they  do  not  desire  to  pass  "  That,  without  intend- 
ing to  put  all  the  following  points  on  the  same  ground, 
nor  wishing  to  go  beyond  what  recognised  Anglican 
authorities  warrant  as  to  their  use,  the  English  Church 
Union  is  of  opinion  that,  in  order  to  bring  about  a 
generally  satisfactory  settlement  of  the  present  ritual 
controversy  in  the  Church  of  England,  there  should 

'  Bishop  Baring,  the  late  Bishop  of  Durham,  a  strong  anti-Rituahst, 
admitted  this.  At  the  consecration  of  a  church  at  Gateshead,  he  said  : 
he  "believed  the  laity  came  and  said,  You  must  do  this,  and  you  must 
do  that ;  we  want  a  higher  ritual  service"  &c. 

^  Speech  of  the  Rev.  T.  T.  Carter. 


TRACTARIANISM  AND  RITUALISM. 


be  no  prohibition  of  the  following  usages,  when  desired 
by  clergy  and  congregations,  viz,  : — 

{a.)  The  Eastward  Position. 

{b.)  The  Vestments. 

{c.)  The  Lights. 

{d.)  The  Mixed  Chalice. 

{e.)  Unleavened  Bread. 

{/.)  Incense." 

We  shall  therefore  confine  ourselves  to  these  six 
points.  We  do  not  wish  to  recommend  their  use ; 
personally  we  prefer  a  less  ornate  ceremonial  in  the 
Church  services ;  but  we  have  nothing  to  with  indi- 
vidual predilections,  nor  with  the  question  whether 
the  re-introduction  of  a  ritual  which  had  long  been 
discontinued  was  or  was  not  advisable  ;  we  are  simply 
concerned  with  their  legality  under  the  rubric  put 
forth  at  the  last  review  of  the  Prayer-Book  in  1662. 

All  these  six  points,  as  any  one  who  pleases  can 
find  for  himself,  were  sanctioned  in  the  second  year 
of  King  Edward  VI.,  and  were  therefore  decided  to 
be  lawful  by  the  Judicial  Committee  and  the  Court 
of  Arches. 

An  objection  is  made  to  Ritualism  on  the  ground 
that  it  is  Popish,  and  opposed  to  the  character  of  the 
"  Protestant  Reformation."  But  the  answer  to  this  is, 
that  Ritualism  is  common  in  the  Protestant  Churches 
of  Germany,  as  well  as  in  other  countries  which  own 
the  Lutheran  communion,  such  as  Sweden,  Denmark, 
Norway,  and  on  the  inhospitable  shores  of  Iceland; 
there  altars,  vestments,  lights  (if  not  even  incense)  are 
in  use ;  the  clergyman  is  called  the  Priest,  and  the 
communion  office  the  Mass  ^. 


Contemporary  Review,  October,  1874. 


572 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY, 


And  then  again,  according  to  the  most  recent  deci- 
sions, the  cope  is  imperative  in  cathedrals  and  colle- 
giate churches.  So  that  the  highest  judicial  authority 
has  admitted  that  the  principle  of  Ritualism  is  sanc- 
tioned by  our  English  Reformers ;  and  when  it  is  re- 
membered that  such  dignitaries  as  the  present  Dean 
of  Exeter,  and  the  late  Dean  McNeile,  have  worn  the 
vestments  (for  the  distinction  between  cope  and  chasu- 
ble is  only  a  matter  of  detail),  the  objection  of  their 
being  Popish  vanishes ;  for  if  it  is  not  Popish  to  wear 
them  in  cathedrals,  it  cannot  of  course  be  Popish  to 
wear  them  in  parish  churches  ^ 

Another  complaint  is  made  of  the  disobedience  of 
Ritualists  towards  their  bishops.  This  is  a  serious 
charge,  for  it  involves  the  necessity  either  of  the 
bishops  being  wrong,  or  of  the  Ritualists  being 
wrong,  or  of  the  law,  by  which  both  are  equally 
bound,  being  wrong.  How  do  the  Ritualists  defend 
themselves 

A  clergyman  is  asked  at  his  ordination  :  "Will  you 
reverently  obey  your  ordinary  and  other  chief  min- 
isters, unto  whom  is  committed  the  charge  and  go- 
vernment over  you,  following  with  a  glad  mind  and 
will  their  godly  admonitions,  and  submitting  yourself 
to  their  godly  judgments?"  To  which  he  answers, 
"  I  will  do  so,  the  Lord  being  my  helper." 

The  words  of  St.  Ignatius  are  often  quoted  :  "  Do 
nothing  without  the  bishop;"  but  those  that  follow 
ought  in  justice  to  be  quoted  also,  "  and  be  ye  also 
subject  to  the  priesthood for  they  shew  the  great 

'■  The  Right  Hon.  Mr.  Beresford  Hope,  one  of  the  Ritual  Commis- 
sioners, suggests  that  as  there  is  an  obligation  to  use  a  special  Eucha- 
ristic  dress  in  cathedrals,  there  ought  to  be  a  permission  to  use  them  in 
parish  churches. 


TRACTARIANISM   AND  RITUALISM. 


573 


esteem  in  which  the  second  order  of  the  ministry  was 
also  held. 

Ritualists  profess  to  be  very  scrupulous  as  to  paying 
proper  deference  and  obedience  to  their  bishops ;  but 
they  contend  that  archbishops  and  bishops  are  equally 
bound  with  priests  to  obey  the  Church,  and  that 
bishops  are  not  infallible.  It  cannot  be  expected  that 
a  clergyman  is  to  yield  a  blindfold  obedience  to  his 
bishop,  or  that  he  is  to  bind  himself  to  a  particular 
course  of  action  in  one  diocese,  when  he  may  be  called 
upon  to  exactly  the  opposite  if  transferred  to  another 
diocese.  The  Ritualist  says  to  his  bishop,  "  If  you 
will  judge  me  by  the  law  of  the  Church,  by  which  you 
are  bound  yourself,  I  acknowledge  your  authority  ;  but 
I  deny  the  right  of  Parliament,  which  contains  not  only 
friends  but  enemies  of  the  Church,  without  the  sanction 
of,  and  in  opposition  to,  the  wishes  of  the  Church,  to 
establish  courts,  or  to  lay  down  rules  affecting  spiritual 
matters."  And  this  objection  of  the  Ritualist  has  com- 
mon sense  on  its  side.  We  will  take  an  imaginary,  but 
by-no-means  improbable,  case.  The  Ornaments  Ru- 
bric, about  which  there  has  been  so  much  controversy, 
has  been  interpreted,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the  Judicial 
Committee  in  two  exactly  opposite  senses.  In  1857 
(Liddell  v.  Westerton)  it  was  decided  that  "  the  same 
dresses,  and  the  same  utensils  and  articles  which  were 
used  under  the  First  Prayer- Book  of  King  Edward  VI. 
may.  still  be  used  ;"  and  although  this  may  be  called 
an  obiter  dictum,  the  same  rule  was  afterwards  laid 
down  in  1868  (Martin  v.  Mackonochie).  A  clergyman 
is  called  upon  by  his  bishop  in  1869  to  stand  an  en- 
quiry, and  submit  to  his  judgment.  He  does  so,  and 
finds  that  the  vestments  are  lawful ;  and,  although  he 
is  not  forced  to  wear  them  (perhaps  he  objects  to 


574 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


them),  yet,  at  the  wish  of  his  congregation,  he  consents 
to  do  so.  In  1 87 1  (Hebbert  z^.  Purchas)  the  Judicial 
Committee  contradicts  its  two  former  judgments,  and 
pronounces  the  vestments  to  be  illegal.  The  same 
clergyman  is  now  called  upon  to  obey  the  new  law. 
But  by  that  time  he  has  taught  his  people  the  meaning 
of  ritual,  which  therefore  is  invested  with  an  import- 
ance which  it  did  not  possess  before.  He  tells  the 
bishop  that  he  cannot  allow  the  State  thus  to  tamper 
with  the  consciences  of  his  congregation,  but  that  he 
is  still  willing  to  be  judged  by  the  bishop  according  to 
the  law  of  the  Church  ;  whether  by  that  law,  the  rubric 
which  prescribes  that  the  vestments  shall  be  retaitied 
and  be  in  tise,  can  possibly  mean  the  same  as  if  it  had 
prescribed,  they  shall  not  be  retained,  and  shall  not 
be  in  tise. 

For  this  reason,  the  Ritualists  claim  that,  judged 
by  the  law  of  common  sense,  and  the  meaning  of  the 
rubric,  they  are  not  acting  uncanonically  as  respects 
the  bishops. 

On  June  3,  1867,  in  consequence  of  a  Vestment  Bill 
which  had  been  introduced  into  the  House  of  Lords 
by  Lord  Shaftesbury,  a  Royal  Commission  was  issued, 
with  a  view  to  explaining  or  amending  the  rubrics, 
orders,  and  directions  of  the  Prayer- Book,  for  regu- 
lating the  course  and  conduct  of  public  worship,  so  as 
to  secure  general  uniformity,  "  more  especially  with 
reference  to  the  ornaments  worn  by  the  ministers 
thereof  at  the  time  of  their  ministration;"  and  also 
to  report  on  alterations  which  might  advantageously 
be  made  "  in  the  Proper  Lessons  appointed  to  be 
read  in  Morning  and  Evening  Prayer  and  Holydays 
throughout  the  year,  and  in  the  Calendar  with  the 
Table  of  First  and  Second  Lessons  contained  in  the 


TRACTARIANISM  AND  RITUALISM. 


575 


said  Book  of  Common  Prayer."  It  was  a  fair  attempt 
on  the  part  of  the  Government  of  the  day  to  deal  with 
the  question ;  and  the  Committee,  as  comprehending 
the  representatives  of  all  schools  of  thought  within  the 
Church,  was  not  unfairly  constituted.  The  Commis- 
sioners began  their  sittings  on  June  20,  and  held  108 
meetings,  the  last  being  on  June  28,  1870.  They 
issued  four  reports:  the  first  on  August  19,  1867  ;  the 
second,  April  30,  1868;  the  third,  January  12,  1870; 
the  fourth,  August  31,  1870.  The  first  was  to  the 
effect  :  "  We  find  that  whilst  these  vestments  are  re- 
garded by  some  witnesses  as  symbolical  of  doctrine, 
and  by  others  as  a  distinctive  vesture  whereby  they 
desire  to  do  honour  to  the  Holy  Communion  as  the 
highest  act  of  Christian  worship,  they  are  by  none  re- 
garded as  essential,  and  they  give  grave  offence  to 
many.  We  are  of  opinion  that  it  is  expedient  to  re- 
strain^ in  the  public  services  of  the  United  Church  of 
England  and  Ireland  all  variations  in  respect  of  ves- 
ture, from  that  which  has  long  been  the  established 
usage  of  the  said  United  Church,  and  we  think  that 
this  may  be  best  secured  by  providing  aggrieved  pa- 
rishioners with  an  easy  and  effectual  process  for  com- 
plaint and  redress."  The  Commissioners  made  their 
second  Report,  to  the  effect  that  lights  on  the  altar 
during  the  celebration  of  Holy  Communion,  the  use 
of  incense,  and  the  vestments,  are  at  variance  with  the 
usage  of  the  Church  for  the  last  300  years,  and  suggest 
"a  speedy  and  inexpensive  remedy,"  which  "should 
be  provided  for  parishioners  aggrieved  by  their  intro- 
duction ;"  but  of  the  Commissioners,  four  signed  with 

•  Mr.  Beresford  Hope,  in  a  recent  number  of  the  Nineteenth  Century, 
points  out  that  by  the  word  "restraining,"  he,  and  those  who  thought  with 
him,  meant  to  exclude  "forbidding." 


576 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


partial  dissent,  four  others  declined  to  sign  at  all, 
and  two  sent  in  separate  Reports.  The  first  and 
second  Reports  led  to  no  legislative  results  ;  the 
Ornaments  Rubric,  which  was  the  chief  object  of  the 
Commission,  as  well  as  the  Athanasian  Creed,  which 
was  at  one  time  imperilled,  remained  unchanged ;  im- 
mense representative  meetings  in  St.  James's  Hall 
and  the  Hanover -square  Rooms  on  January  31, 
1873,  shewed  the  mind  of  the  Church  against  any 
change  in  the  latter  ;  and  Convocation  laid  down  the 
sense  in  which  the  warning  clauses  in  that  Creed  are 
to  be  interpreted.  But  in  two  respects  the  Ritual 
Commission  did  some  service  to  the  Church  ;  to  it  we 
are  indebted  for  two  important  Acts  of  Parliament, 
passed  with  the  approval  of  Convocation  ;  one,  the 
result  of  the  third  Report,  sanctioning  a  new  Table 
of  Lessons  ^  which,  on  January  i,  1879,  became  the 
only  legal  Lectionary  ;  the  other,  of  the  fourth  Re- 
port, sanctioning  a  shortened  form  of  service  in  parish 
churches 

So  late  as  May  20,  1881,  it  was  paraded  in  some 
of  the  newspapers,  that  a  memorial  against  Ritualism 
has  lately  been  presented  to  the  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury, signed  by  ripwards  of  24,000  Churchme7t.  It 
is  not,  however,  stated  what  portion  of  this  number 
were  Coimmmicmits ;  it  cannot,  therefore,  in  weight  be 
compared  to  the  remonstrance  against  the  Purchas 
Judgment  of  the  5,000,  who  were  not  only  Communi- 
cants, but  Clergymen,  which  was  presented  on  April  24, 
1 87 1,  to  the  archbishops  and  bishops  by  so  moderate 
and  universally  respected  a  Churchman  as  the  late 

An  Act  to  amend  the  Law  relating  to  the  Table  of  Lessons  and 
Psalter  contained  in  the  Prayer-Book  (1871). 

An  Act  for  the  Amendment  of  the  Act  of  Uniformity  (1872). 


TRACTARIANISM  AND  RITUALISM. 


577 


Dean  Hook  ;  whilst  in  number  it  is  a  considerable 
decline  from  a  similar  document  on  May  5,  1873,  pro- 
moted by  the  Church  Association,  signed  by  60,200 
laymen,  and  presented  to  the  Archbishops  at  Lambeth 
Palace, 

We  will  conclude  this  chapter  with  an  extract  from 
a  recent  leading  article  in  the  "  Guardian,"  the  repre- 
sentative paper  of  the  moderate  High  Church  party. 
The  opponents  of  the  Ritualists  "  may  rest  assured 
that  any  contraction  of  the  base  of  the  Establishment 
would  inevitably  and  soon  bring  about  its  overthrow. 
Let  them  lay  to  heart  certain  very  seasonable  appli- 
cations which  have  more  than  once  been  made  of  the 
text,  '  Except  these  abide  in  the  ship,  ye  cannot  be 
saved.'  " 


pp 


CHAPTER  II. 


THE  LAW  AND  THE  RITUALISTS. 

"NTO  account  of  Ritualism  would  be  complete  without 
■'■  ^  some  notice  of  those  ecclesiastical  courts  in  which 
it  has  borne  so  conspicuous  a  part.  We  shall,  there- 
fore, take  the  opportunity,  which  has  not  occurred  be- 
fore, of  describing  briefly  the  past  and  present  system 
of  ecclesiastical  legislation  in  England. 

We  learn  from  the  Constitutions  of  Clarendon  that 
the  gradation  of  appeals,  as  far  back  as  the  history  of 
our  ecclesiastical  courts  can  be  traced,  was  from  the 
archdeacon  to  the  bishop,  from  the  bishop  to  the  arch- 
bishop, and  lastly,  from  the  archbishop,  "  if  he  should 
be  wanting  injustice"  {si  defuerit  in  justitid  exhibenda), 
to  the  king  ;  but,  even  in  the  last  event,  the  cause  was 
not  to  be  taken  out  of  the  hands  of  the  archbishop,  but 
to  be  remitted  to  him  to  be  determined  in  his  court  {in 
airid  airhiepiscopi  terminehir) ;  and  it  could  not  with- 
out the  consent  of  the  king  be  taken  to  Rome.  So 
that,  although  appeals  undoubtedly  were  made  to 
Rome,  it  was  against  the  law  of  the  land,  especially 
the  statutes  of provisors  and  prmnunire,  and  the  final 
resort  was  to  the  court  of  the  archbishop. 

This  continued  till  the  Reformation ;  when,  by  the 
"  Statute  of  Appeals,"  all  appeals  from  the  archbishop's 
court  to  Rome  were  absolutely  forbidden.  In  1534,  the 
first  encroachment  on  the  spiritual  jurisdiction  was 
made ;  the  archbishop's  court  ceased  to  be  the  final 
resort,  and  an  appeal  was  allowed  to  the  king  in 
Chancery  ;  the  High  Court  of  Delegates  (so  called  from 
their  being  delegated  by  the  king  to  hear  causes)  was 


THE  LAW  AND  THE  RITUALISTS. 


579 


established  for  all  causes  not  touching  the  king.  That 
court  consisted  of  ecclesiastical  persons,  who  were  as- 
sisted by  common  and  chancery  lawyers,  appointed  on 
behalf  of  the  Crown,  to  see  that  no  statute  or  common 
law  of  the  kingdom  was  violated.  The  real  judges 
were  the  bishops,  who  called  to  their  aid  the  Professors 
of  Theology  of  the  two  Universities  to  advise  on  theo- 
logical questions,  and  ecclesiastical  lawyers  to  advise 
on  questions  involving  canon  law ;  but,  as  a  matter  of 
fact  (as  far  at  least  as  can  be  ascertained),  for  a  period 
of  156  years  (1534 — 1690),  no  case  of  doctrine  came 
before  the  court;  from  1690  to  1832,  including,  it 
must  be  observed,  the  most  degenerate  period  of  our 
Church's  history,  only  four  cases  of  doctrine  or  dis- 
cipline were  brought  before  it  ^ 

In  1832,  the  Court  of  Delegates  having  fallen  into 
disfavour,  two  commissions  were  appointed,  to  report 
on  the  subject  of  ecclesiastical  courts  ;  and  the  court  was 
abolished,  its  jurisdiction  being  transferred  to  the  whole 
Privy  Council,  which,  as  it  was  composed  of  lords  spiri- 
tual as  well  as  temporal,  the  commissioners  thought 
a  fitting  tribunal  to  settle  appeals  from  the  ecclesias- 
tical courts.  But,  by  a  statute  in  the  next  year, 
through  an  unfortunate  mischance,  the  supreme  court 
was  transferred  from  the  whole  to  a  committee  of  the 
Privy  Council.     An  act  was  passed for  assimilating 

*  Joyce,  The  Sword  and  the  Keys.  Those  cases  were,  i.  Salter  v. 
Davis,  November  lo,  1691,  in  which  three  bishops  sat ;  2.  Bishop  of  St. 
David's  v.  Lucy,  March  13,  1699,  six  bishops  sat;  3.  PeUing  v.  Dr. Bettes- 
worth,  May  16,  1713,  five  bishops;  4.  Havard Evanson,  June  27, 
1775,  was  a  matter  of  a  mere  technical  point  of  law,  so  no  bishops  sat. 
As  late  as  1777,  three  bishops  sat  as  delegates  on  an  important  case  of 
nullity  of  marriage. 

"  It  is  a  very  bungling  piece  of  work,  and  one  which  Lord  Lans- 
downe  ought  not  to  consent  to,  the  object  evidently  being  to  make  a  court 
of  which  Brougham  shall  be  at  the  head,  and  to  transfer  to  it  much  of  the 

P  p  2 


580  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


the  process  of  admiralty  and  colonial  appeals,  and, 
although  not  a  word  appeared  in  the  enacting  clauses 
comprehending  the  ecclesiastical  amongst  the  courts 
enumerated,  by  a  blunder  of  the  draftsman,  these 
courts  also  were  included. 

For  this  statement  the  highest  authority  can  be 
adduced.  Lord  Brougham,  the  chief  author  of  the 
act,  himself  said,  that  the  Judicial  Committee  of  Privy 
Council  was  never  framed  with  the  expectation  of  ec- 
clesiastical causes  being  brought  before  it ;  he  had  "no 
doubt  that  if  it  had  been  constituted  with  a  view  to 
such  cases  as  the  present  (the  Gorham  case),  some 
other  arrangement  would  have  been  made."  The 
Bishop  of  London  (Blomfield) — who,  with  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  (Dr.  Howley),  and  Dr.  Kaye  of 
Lincoln,  sat  on  both  commissions,  and  approved  of  the 
first  appeal  to  the  whole  Privy  Council — said  distinctly 
with  regard  to  the  second,  "  the  question  of  doctrinal 
appeals  was  not  alluded  to,"  and  that  "  the  contingen- 
cies of  such  an  appeal  came  into  no  one's  mind." 
When,  therefore,  people  speak  of  the  bishops  on  the 
commission  approving  of  the  change  in  the  Court  of 
Appeal,  they  must  bear  in  mind  that  they  were  speak- 
ing of  the  first,  not  the  second  commission. 

The  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council,  how- 
ever, was  constituted.  That  Committee  consisted  of 
about  thirty  persons,  all  of  whom,  except  two,  might 
be  dissenters ;  by  statute,  three  of  these  (although 
there  was  generally  a  larger  number)  formed  a  quorum, 
and  they  were  selected  by  the  Lord  President  of  the 
Privy  Council,  who  might   himself  be  a  dissenter. 

authority  of  the  Crown,  Parliament,  and  Priv>'  Council ;  all  from  his 
ambitious  and  insatiable  desire  of  personal  aggrandisement."  (Greville 
Memoirs,  January  3,  1833.) 


THE  LAW  AND  THE  RITUALISTS. 


The  archbishops  and  bishops  who  were  members  of 
the  Privy  Council  were  allowed  to  sit,  but  with  what 
authority  does  not  appear ;  so  that  it  comes  to  this, 
that  the  judges,  who  by  law  might  sit  in  judgment 
on  cases  decided  by  archbishops  and  bishops  and  the 
Church  courts,  and  settle  abstruse  points  of  Church 
doctrine,  might  all  of  them  be  dissenters  ^ 

This  continued  so  till  1873,  when  Lord  Selborne's 
"Judicature  Act"  was  passed,  which  created  a  new 
supreme  Court  of  Appeal,  to  which  Privy  Council 
jurisdiction  was  to  be  transferred  by  order  of  the 
Queen  in  Council ;  but  as,  under  that  act,  only  lay 
judges  sat,  a  variation  was  made  in  ecclesiastical 
causes,  in  which  the  archbishops  and  bishops  were  to 
sit  in  rotation,  but  as  assessors  only,  not  as  judges. 
This  act  was,  in  respect  of  the  foregoing  provisions, 
superseded  by  the  "Appellate  Jurisdiction  Act"  of 
1876,  under  which  the  same  mode  of  trying  ecclesias- 
tical causes  is  now  adopted  by  the  Judicial  Committee 
of  the  Privy  Council,  which  is  the  tribunal  still  in 
force. 

Until  1874,  the  Court  of  Appeal  in  the  province  of 
Canterbury  was  the  Court  of  Arches,  the  Judge  of 
which  was  called  the  Dean  of  Arches  ^ ;  and  in  the 
province  of  York,  the  Chancery  Court  of  York.  But 
in  that  year  an  Act  of  Parliament,  known  as  the 
"  Public  Worship  Regulation  Act,"  was  passed,  pur- 
porting to  be  "  an  Act  for  the  better  administration  of 
the  Laws  respecting  the  Regulation  of  Public  Wor- 
ship."   It  enacted  that  when  a  vacancy  should  occur 

'  Joyce's  Sword  and  Keys. 
So  called  because  he  formerly  held  his  court  in  the  church  of  St.  Mary- 
le-Bow  (Sancta  Maria  de  Arcubus),  though  afterwards  all  spiritual  courts 
were  held  in  Doctors'  Commons. 


582  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 

in  the  office  of  Judge  of  the  Court  of  Arches,  or 
Auditor  of  the  Chancery  Court  of  York,  the  two 
archbishops,  subject  to  the  approval  of  the  queen,  to 
be  signified  under  her  sign  manual,  were  to  appoint 
as  judge  a  member  of  the  Church  of  England,  a  bar- 
rister-at-law,  who  had  been  in  actual  practice  for  ten 
years ;  or  a  person  who  has  been  judge  of  one  of  the 
superior  courts  of  law  or  equity,  or  of  any  court  to 
which  the  jurisdiction  of  any  such  court  has  been, 
or  may  hereafter  be,  transferred  by  authority  of  Par- 
liament ;  if  the  archbishops  failed  to  appoint  within  six 
months,  her  Majesty  might,  by  letters  patent,  appoint 
the  judge  ;  and  the  judge  should  combine  in  his  person 
the  two  offices  before  held  by  the  Dean  of  Arches  and 
the  Auditor  of  the  Chancery  Court  of  York. 

The  Prime  Minister  of  the  day  ingenuously  con- 
fessed that  it  was  an  act  for  putting  down  Ritualism, 
which  he  described  as  the  "  Mass  in  Masquerade." 
Nothing  better  to  the  Ritualists  themselves  than  such 
a  one-sided  act  could  have  been  devised.  From  the 
passing  of  that  act,  in  opposition  to  the  Lower  Houses 
of  Convocation  both  of  Canterbury  and  York,  the 
cause  of  Ritualism  was  won.  Open  war  was  pro- 
claimed. A  Society,  called  the  "  Church  Association," 
with  a  capital  of  ^50,000,  was  determined,  if  money 
could  do  it,  that  Ritualism  should  be  "  put  down  ;  " 
the  English  Church  Union,  with  its  motto  Defence  not 
Defiance,  pledged  "  to  defend  and  maintain  unim- 
paired the  doctrine  and  discipline  of  the  Church  of 
England,"  determined  that  it  should  not  be  put  down  ; 
and  the  "  Church  of  England  Working-men's  Society" 
has  since  enlisted  in  the  cause  of  the  Ritualists  the 
sympathy  of  the  working-classes  of  the  community. 
The  Ritualists,  feeling  that  the  act  was  directed  ex- 


THE  LAW  AND  THE  RITUALISTS.  583 

pressly  against  themselves,  determined  that  they  would 
assert  their  rights ;  they  contended  that  though  the 
act  declared  that  the  judge  should  become  ex  officio 
"  official  Principal  of  the  Arches  Court  of  Canterbury," 
and  that  all  proceedings  taken  before  him  should  be 
"  deemed  to  be  taken  in  the  Arches  Court,"  yet  that 
a  new  court  had  really  been  appointed  in  matters  not 
only  ceremonial,  but  also  doctrinal ;  that  the  new  judge 
was  created  without  the  consent  and  against  the  will 
of  the  Church  ;  that  thus  the  constitutional  rights  of 
Convocation  had  been  invaded,  whilst  the  clergy  had 
been  deprived  of  their  prescriptive  rights  by  the  House 
of  Commons,  from  which  they  alone,  as  an  order,  were 
excluded ;  that  the  act  virtually  suppressed  for  certain 
causes  the  diocesan  courts,  and  for  all  causes  actually 
suppressed  the  provincial  courts  ;  that  by  the  opera- 
tion of  the  act  the  spiritual  jurisdiction  of  the  episco- 
pate is,  in  some  cases,  practically  suspended,  and  in 
others  absolutely  abolished  ;  that  by  the  office  of  the 
new  judge,  the  spiritual  rights  of  the  priesthood  are 
infringed,  both  in  the  courts  of  first  instance  and  in 
those  of  appeal  ;  and  that  therefore  the  decisions 
of  the  new  judge  could  not  be  recognised  as  pos- 
sessing any  spiritual  authority  on  the  consciences  of 
clergymen. 

Such  was  from  the  first  the  contention  of  the  Ritual- 
ists. Everything  about  the  bill  was  crude  and  inde- 
finite ;  even  the  framers  of  it  did  not  seem  to  know 
their  own  minds.  The  motive  of  the  bill  was  never 
plain  ;  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  who  introduced 
the  original  bill,  said  it  was  equally  directed  against 
all  parlies ;  the  Prime  Minister,  that  it  was  a  bill  to 
put  down  Ritualism.  Lord  Shaftesbury  declared  that, 
though  he  was  called  a  Low  Churchman,  yet  that, 
even  if  his  party  should  have  a  monopoly  of  bishops 


584  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAV. 

for  the  next  fifty  years,  he  would  object  to  giving  to 
the  bishops  such  power  as  was  proposed  under  the 
act.  From  its  birth  it  has  set  the  Church  by  the  ears. 
Bishops  have  shewn  a  wholesome  dread  of  it ;  even 
the  Church  Association  finds  that  it  does  not  re- 
alize its  expectations ;  Ritualists  have  ignored  it  ; 
lawyers  have  blundered  over  it ;  the  highest  legal 
authorities  have  quarrelled  over  it  ^ ;  a  want  of  sym- 
pathy between  bishops  and  clergy  has  ensued  ;  the 
High  Church  party  have  discovered  that  danger 
threatens  themselves  if  left  to  the  tender  mercies  of 
three  aggrieved  parishioners,  perhaps  the  most  dis- 
reputable of  their  flock,  —  "  proximus  ardet  Ucale- 
gon ; "  hence  an  increased  feeling  of  sympathy  to  the 
Ritualists,  four  of  whom  have  already  gone  to  prison, 
and  others  are  ready  to  follow  their  example  rather 
than  obey  the  obnoxious  act. 

Let  us  now  enquire  how  modern  litigation  has 
affected  the  doctrine  and  ritual  of  the  Church. 
I.  As  to  Doctrine.  It  has  been  decided, — 
(a.)  A  clergyman  may  hold  that  grace  may  be  granted 
before,  in,  or  after  Baptism ;  that  in  Baptism  God 
works  invisibly,  but  only  in  such  as  worthily  receive 
it,  and  in  them  alone  it  has  a  wholesome  effect ;  but 
regeneration  does  not  necessarily  accompany  the  act 
of  Baptism,  nor  is  it  unconditional  ^    This  judgment 

•  An  angry  newspaper  correspondence  took  place  between  Lord  Pen- 
zance, the  judge  under  the  P.  W.  R.  A.,  and  the  late  Lord  Chief  Justice, 
in  which  the  former  unintentionally  condemned  himself  and  the  court 
over  which  he  presides.  Lord  Penzance  had  suspended  Mr.  Mackono- 
chie  for  three  years  ;  the  Court  of  Queen's  Bench  overruled  his  judg- 
ment. Thereupon  Lord  Penzance  retorted  that  there  was  no  reason  for 
supposing  that  the  Lord  Chief  Justice,  bei7ig  a  civil  judge,  could  know 
anything  of  ecclesiastical  law.  But  if  so,  the  question  arises.  How  did 
Lord  Penzance  himself,  in  the  Divorce  Court,  acquire  his  fitness  to  be 
an  ecclesiastical  judge 

'  Gorham  v.  Bishop  of  Exeter.    After  this  judgment,  Bishop  Blomfield 


THE  LAW  AND  THE  RITUALISTS. 


may  be  said  to  favour  an  exceedingly  small  section 
of  ultra-Evangelicals, 

(jQ.)  A  clergyman  may  teach  that  "  the  Bible  is  an 
expression  of  devout  reason,  to  be  read  with  reason 
in  freedom  ; "  or  that  "  the  Bible  is  the  written  voice 
of  the  congregation."  He  may  deny  that  every  part 
of  the  Scriptures  was  written  under  the  inspiration  of 
the  Holy  Spirit,  and  is  the  Word  of  God,  because 
such  a  proposition  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  Articles 
or  formularies  of  the  Church  ^. 

(y.)  It  is  not  penal  in  him  to  express  a  hope  that 
even  the  ultimate  pardon  of  the  wicked  who  are  con- 
demned on  the  day  of  judgment  may  be  consistent 
with  the  will  of  Almighty  God  This  and  the  pre- 
ceding judgment  favours  the  more  extreme  section 
of  the  Broad  Church  party. 

(5.)  He  may  hold  that  in  the  Holy  Eucharist  there 
is  "  an  actual  Presence  of  the  true  Body  and  Blood  of 
our  Lord  in  the  consecrated  Bread  and  Wine,"  "  with- 
out or  external  to  the  communicant,  and  separately 
from  the  act  of  reception  by  the  communicant."  He 
may  also  maintain  that  "  the  Communion-table  is  an 
altar  of  sacrifice  .  .  .  and  that  there  is  a  great  sacrifice 
or  offering  of  our  Lord  by  the  ministering  priest,  in 
which  the  mediation  of  our  Lord  ascends  from  the 
altar  to  plead  for  the  sins  of  men."  Also,  that  "  ado- 
ration is  due  to  Christ  present  upon  the  altars  or  Com- 

saw  the  expediency  of  some  change  in  the  constitution  of  the  ecclesi- 
astical courts,  and  proposed  to  revive  the  dormant  rights  of  the  Upper 
House  of  Convocation  as  a  court  of  appeal,  with  power  "  to  summon  the 
judges  or  retired  judges  of  the  ecclesiastical,  common  law,  and  equity 
courts"  to  hear  ecclesiastical  causes.  Lord  John  Russell,  however,  ob- 
jected that  this  would  only  end  by  substituting  "the  supremacy  of  the 
Pope  for  that  of  the  Queen,"  so,  through  the  opposition  of  the  Govern- 
ment, the  bill  was  defeated.    (Mem.  of  Bp.  Blomfield,  ii.  132.) 

8  Williams  v.  Bishop  of  Salisbury.  Wilson  v.  Fendall, 


586 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


munion- tables  of  the  churches  in  the  Sacrament'." 
CathoHcs  can  desire  no  higher  doctrine  than  this. 

(e.)  A  clergyman  may  not  refuse  to  administer  the 
Holy  Communioil  to  a  parishioner  on  the  ground  of 
his  denial  of  the  eternity  of  future  punishment,  or 
of  the  personality  and  existence  of  the  devils  This 
judgment  is  opposed  to  the  feelings  of  both  High 
Churchmen  and  Low  Churchmen  alike. 

2.  Next  as  to  ritual ;  with  respect  to  which  we 
confine  ourselves  to  decisions  as  to  the  six  points 
claimed  by  Ritualists. 

(a.)  Vestments. — The  minister  may  not  wear,  nor 
sanction  the  wearing,  of  a  chasuble,  dalmatic,  tunicle, 
or  albe.  The  surplice  is  the  only  vestment  prescribed 
for  the  parochial  clergy  at  all  times  of  their  ministra- 
tions, but  "a  cope  is  to  be  worn  in  ministering  the 
Holy  Communion  on  high  feast-days,  in  cathedral  and 
collegiate  churches 

(/3.)  The  Eastward  Position.  —  This,  during  the 
Prayer  of  Consecration,  is  not  unlawful,  so  long  as 
the  minister  stands  so  that  the  communicants  present, 
or  the  bulk  of  them,  being  properly  placed,  can  see 
the  breaking  of  bread  and  the  taking  the  cup  into  his 
hand  ^ :  but  he  may  not  elevate  the  paten  or  cup  over 
his  head,  nor  kneel  or  prostrate  himself  before  the  con- 
secrated elements 

(7.)  Lights  on  the  Altar.  —  Lighted  candles  may 
not  be  used  on  the  Holy  Table  ceremonially,  and 
not  for  the  purpose  of  giving  light,  during  the  Holy 
Communion  °. 

(5.)  The    Mixed   Chalice.  —  Water   may  not  be 

'  Sheppard  v.  Bennett.  ^  Jenkins  v.  Cook. 

Hebbert  v.  Purchas  ;  Clifton  v.  Ridsdale  ;  Coombe  v.  Edwards. 
'  Clifton  V.  Ridsdale.  "  Martin  v.  Mackonochie.  "  Ibid. 


THE  LAW   AND   THE  RITUALISTS. 


mixed  with  the  wine  during  the  celebration",  nor 
previously  p. 

(e.)  Unleavened  Bread.  —  Only  such  bread  as  is 
usually  eaten  may  be  used  at  Holy  Communion  ;  this, 
however,  refers  only  to  the  composition  of  the  bread 
(it  must  be  leavened),  not  to  the  shape  ^ 

(^.)  Incense. — This  may  not  be  used  ceremonially'. 

What,  then,  are  the  fruits  of  all  this  litigation  and 
miserable  waste  of  money  What  was  the  result  of 
the  Purchas  judgment  ?  It  is  true,  he  was  called 
upon  to  pay  costs  amounting  to  ^2,096,  and  that  in 
February,  1872,  a  sequestration  was  placed  on  his 
lay  goods  (for  the  value  of  what  he  derived  from  the 
church  was  nil),  and  that  he  died  in  October  of  the 
same  year ;  but  this  could  scarcely  be  what  the  Church 
Association  desired.  But  that  judgment,  contradict- 
ing as  it  did  the  previous  judgments  of  the  same  court, 
was  received  with  a  storm  of  indignation,  not  only  by 
Ritualists,  but  also  by  moderate  High  Churchmen  :  it 
was  repudiated  by  4,934  clergy,  that  is,  nearly  a  quar- 
ter of  the  body,  some  of  them  high  dignitaries,  in  the 
following  Protest  to  the  Bishops  : — "  We,  the  under- 
signed clergy  of  the  Church  of  England,  hereby  offer 
our  solemn  remonstrance  against  the  decision  of  the 
Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council  in  the  case 
of  Hebbert  v.  Purchas  :"  (here  follow  the  reasons  for 
the  Protest,  which  ends  thus  :)  "  On  these  grounds, 
although  many  of  us  are  not  personally  affected  by  the 
judgment,  we  earnestly  trust  that  your  Lordships  will 
abstain  from  acting  upon  this  decision,  and  thus  pre- 
serve the  ancient  liberty  of  the  Church  of  England." 


"  Martin  v.  Mackonochie. 
p  Hebbert  v.  Purchas  ;  Clifton  v.  Ridsdale. 
Clifton  V.  Ridsdale.  '  Martin  v.  Mackonochie. 


588  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 

Have  the  law  courts  succeeded  in  putting  down 
Ritualism  ?  has  Ritualism  diminished  since  the  pass- 
ing of  the  Public  Worship  Regulation  Act  ?  The  con- 
trary is  the  case.  From  the  "  Statistics  of  London  and 
Suburban  Churches  ^"  it  would  appear  that  whereas 
in  1874,  vestments  were  in  use  in  30,  the  eastward  po- 
sition in  74,  incense  in  14,  altar-lights  in  36  churches; 
in  1880,  vestments  were  in  use  in  35,  the  eastward 
position  in  234,  incense  in  11,  and  altar-lights  in  54 
churches  ;  whilst  throughout  England  the  vestments 
were,  in  1880,  worn  in  no  churches,  as  against  82 
in  1874. 

It  has  been  asserted  that  the  object  of  Church  prose- 
cutions was  to  obtain  a  definition  of  the  law ;  it  may 
therefore  fairly  be  supposed  that  the  promoters,  after 
having  found  out  what  the  law  is,  are  ready  to  act  on 
it ;  at  any  rate,  they  can  no  longer  accuse  their  oppo- 
nents of  being  law-breakers,  unless  they  themselves 
observe  the  law.  But  can  it  be  fairly  said  that  either 
of  the  parties  in  the  Church  is  prepared  to  abide  by 
the  judgments  of  the  Privy  Council. 

One  party  may  find  satisfaction  (we  will  not  say  in 
the  Gorham  judgment),  but  in  Martin  v.  Mackonochie, 
Hebbert  v.  Purchas,  and  Clifton  v.  Ridsdale ;  but  do 
they  as  readily  accept  the  decisions  in  Sheppard  v.  Ben- 
nett, Jenkins  v.  Cook,  or  Fendall  v.  Wilson,  and  the 
Bishop  of  Salisbury  v.  Williams  ?  or  of  the  eastward 
position  as  sanctioned  in  Clifton  v.  Ridsdale.  The 
Gorham  case  (although  it  did  not  question  that  Bap- 
tismal Regeneration  is  the  doctrine  of  the  Church)  fa- 
voured the  views  of  the  extreme  Low  Church  party. 
But  the  Privy  Council  has  sanctioned  also  the  east- 
ward position  in  the  Prayer  of  Consecration ;  two 

'  Mackeson's  Guide. 


THE  LAW  AND  THE  RITUALISTS. 


altar-lights  (not  lighted,  but  sufficient  to  symbolize  the 
divine  and  human  nature  of  our  Lord),  and  a  cross 
over  the  altar ;  it  has  condemned  the  black  gown,  and 
decided  that  the  surplice  is  the  only  legal  dress  in 
parochial  churches,  whilst  a  cope  is  to  be  used  at  high 
festivals  in  cathedrals ;  it  has  taken  away  a  few  orna- 
ments, but  left  the  highest  doctrine  of  the  Church  on 
the  Eucharist  intact.  Is  either  party  prepared  to 
abide  by  the  nineteenth  century  theology  of  the  Privy 
Council  ?  If  so,  it  must  no  longer  preach  from  the 
pulpit  that  the  Bible  is  the  inspired  Word  of  God,  for 
the  Privy  Council  has  taught  that  it  contains  also  un- 
inspired matter ;  nor  the  eternity  of  future  punish- 
ment, for  it  has  taught  that  hell  may  mean  only  a  pur- 
gatory. It  may,  indeed,  preach  that  the  Eucharistic 
vestments  are  unlawful ;  but  it  must  not  deny  the  doc- 
trine which  the  vestments  denote,  the  Real  Objective 
Presence,  nor  the  Eucharistic  sacrifice,  nor  Eucharistic 
worship. 

But  we  must  not  omit  one  episode  in  the  history  of 
the  Public  Worship  Regulation  Act.  One  small  party 
was  desirous  that  that  act  should  be  passed,  for  they 
imagined  it  would  supply  an  easy  means  for  putting 
down  Ritualism.  But  let  us  see,  now  they  have  that 
act,  whether  they  are  satisfied.  Under  the  act  it  is 
necessary  that  the  prosecutors  should  find  three  pa- 
rishioners of  full  age  who  feel  aggrieved,  and  then  they 
may,  but  not  without  the  consent  of  the  bishop  of  the 
diocese,  institute  proceedings  against  a  clergyman  for 
Ritualism  But  they  find  it  difficult  to  procure  even 
these  three  aggrieved  parishioners,  although  the  law 

'  The  bishop  under  the  P.  W.  R.  A,  may  withhold  his  consent,  in  which 
case  he  must  signify  his  reason  in  writing,  to  be  kept  in  the  registry  of 
the  diocese. 


590 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


does  not  require  that  they  should  be  communicants, 
nor  is  it  particular  about  their  character 

So  what  do  they  do?  The  "Church  Discipline 
Act"  of  1840  required  only  one  parishioner  for  prose- 
cutor, and  seemed  to  deprive  the  bishop  of  any  dis- 
cretion in  the  matter.  In  the  parish  of  Clewer,  which 
may  be  taken  as  the  model  of  an  English  parish  under 
its  late  venerable  rector,  they  found  one  aggrieved  per- 
son, who,  though  nominally  possessing  a  footing  in  the 
parish,  really  lived  out  of  England.  The  bishop  of 
the  diocese  (Oxford),  finding  that  there  was  only  one 
dissentient  in  the  parish,  and  that  he  was  actuated 
by  the  Church  Association,  which  had  no  existence 
in  the  parish,  refused  to  interfere,  and  proceedings 
were  taken  in  the  Court  of  Queen's  Bench  to  compel 
him.  The  case  turned  wholly  upon  the  question 
whether  a  bishop  could  be  compelled,  under  the 
Church  Discipline  Act  of  1840,  to  do  what,  under 
the  P.  W.  R.  A.,  was  left  to  his  discretion.  Mainly 
owing  to  the  manner  in  which  the  bishop  conducted 
his  own  case,  the  court  unanimously  granted  the  man- 
damus. With  equal  unanimity  the  judgment  was  re- 
versed on  May  30,  1879,  by  an  equal  number  of  Lord 
Justices  of  Appeal.  But  we  learn  one  lesson  from 
the  above  incident,  viz.  that  the  Church  Association, 
the  great  admirers  of  the  P.  W.  R.  A.,  have,  like  every 
one  else,  grown  tired  of  it,  and  that  they  would  readily 
return  to  their  own  system.  For  this  assertion,  v.^e 
have  the  words  of  the  Chairman  himself  of  the  Church 
Association:   "When  we  get  the  decision"  (i.e.  the 

"  A  dignitary  of  the  Church  writes  :  "  The  other  day — I  name  no 
names,  but  I  state  a  fact — an  Enghsh  gentleman,  having  with  much  dif- 
ficulty overcome  the  reluctance  of  his  son  to  join  him  in  his  anti-ritual 
campaign,  called  in  his  butler  to  make  up  the  party  of  the  three  aggrieved 
parishioners." — Arch.  Uenison,  Notes  of  my  Life,  p.  368. 


THE  LAW  AND  THE  RITUALISTS. 


decision  in  the  Clewer  case  before  the  Court  of  Ap- 
peal, which  they  made  sure  would  be  in  their  favour), 
"  we  shall  be  able  to  proceed  on  the  complaint  of  one 
parishioner,  who,  the  bisJiop  having  no  discretion,  will 
be  able  to  brino-  the  offender  before  the  law."  This 
is  the  Society  which  complains  of  the  want  of  respect 
to  bishops ;  the  Society  of  which  one  bishop  (the 
Bishop  of  Liverpool),  who  of  all  might  have  been 
thought  to  be  most  friendly  to  it,  confesses,  "  I  may 
fairly  say,  that  of  all  the  bodies  banded  together  for 
particular  objects,  there  is  none  more  unpopular,  and 
none  more  thoroughly  hated,  than  the  Church  As- 
sociation 

The  Ritualists,  who  have  been  the  chief  objects  of 
attack  under  the  Public  Worship  Regulation  Act,  are 
accused  of  being  law-breakers,  because  they  prefer  to 
go  to  prison,  even  to  be  deprived  of  their  benefices, 
rather  than  obey  that  court.  We  do  not  hold  a  brief 
for  the  Ritualists,  but  what  is  their  cause  to-day  may 
be  the  cause  of  others  to-morrow.  There  are  some, 
and  those  influential,  people,  quite  as  strongly  opposed 
to  the  Nicene  and  Athanasian  Creeds  as  others  are 
to  Ritualism  ;  "  Mutato  nomine,  de  te  fabula  narra- 
tur."  So  we  will  enquire  into  the  charge  from  the 
view  of  all  Churchmen  who  would  disclaim  the  charge 
of  Erastianism. 

What  is  meant  by  law-breakers  ?  If  there  are  two 
conflicting  laws,  one  of  the  Church,  the  other  of  the 
State,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  clergymen  are 
bound  to  follow  the  former,  even  if  they  suffer  for  it. 
Every  clergyman,  at  his  Ordination,  vows  that  he  will 
give  "  faithful  diligence  so  to  minister  the  Word  and 
Sacraments,  and  discipline  of  the  Church,  as  the  Lord 

*  Speech  at  the  Annual  Meeting  of  the  Church  Association,  1879. 


592  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


hath  commanded,  and  as  this  Church  and  Realm  have 
received  the  same;"  and  unless  he  takes  that  vow,  no 
bishop  would  ordain  him. 

At  the  present  day,  the  claims  of  the  State  and  the 
ecclesiastical  law  courts,  are  at  variance  with  the  ori- 
ginal compact  on  which  the  union  of  Church  and  State 
rests.  In  the  "Magna  Charta"  of  King  John,  by 
which  succeeding  kinsrs  have  bound  themselves,  the 
first  article  oruarantees  the  rights  of  the  Church  of 
England,  "  quod  libera  sit  Ecclesia."  At  the  Refor- 
mation, the  "Act  of  Appeals"  (the  first  act  by  which 
the  new  relations  between  Church  and  State  were  en- 
tered upon)  set  forth  :  "  This  realm  is  an  empire, 
governed  by  one  supreme  head  and  king,  unto  whom 
a  body  politic,  compact  of  all  sorts  and  degrees  of 
people,  and  by  names  of  spirituality  and  temporality, 
is  bound  to  bear  a  natural  and  humble  obedience.  .  .  . 
The  body  spiritual  w/iereof  having  power  when  aiiy 
cause  of  tJie  lazv  divine  happemd  to  come  in  question, 
then  it  was  declared,  interpreted,  and  shewed  by  that 
part  of  the  body  politic  called  the  spirituality,  ivhich 
hath  always  been  thought  and  is  at  this  hour  sjifficient 
and  vieet  of  itself  to  declare  and  detennine  stuh  doubts 
as  to  their  roo7ns  spiritual  doth  appertaiti."  The  clerg}*, 
even  when  dealing  with  such  an  arbitrary  monarch  as 
Henry  refused  to  acknowledge  his  unqualified 

supremacy  over  the  Church,  and  only  did  so  with  the 
important  proviso,  "  quantum  per  Christi  legem  decet ;" 
which  can  only  mean  one  thing,  viz.  that  princes  have 
no  rights  or  jurisdiction  over  the  Church  except  what 
the  law  of  Christ  confers  ;  and  to  nothing  beyond  this 
did  the  clergy  under  Henry,  or  have  the  clerg}'  since, 
bound  themselves.  Henry,  in  his  letter  to  Bishop 
Tunstall,  explains  the  rights  of  the  Crown  in  the  same 


THE  LAW  AND  THE  RITUALISTS. 


593 


sense  :  "  We  be  as  God's  law  stiffereth  us  to  be,  where- 
uiito  we  do  and  must  conform  ourselves"  He  confines 
his  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction  to  matters  of  a  temporal, 
or  at  most  a  partly  temporal,  nature,  such  as  summon- 
ing and  confirming  the  law  of  Convocation,  the  cogni- 
zance of  criminal  causes,  &c. 

A  message,  sent  by  Queen  Elizabeth  to  Parliament, 
states  her  Majesty's  pleasure  to  be,  that  "  from  hence- 
forth no  bills  concerning  religion  shall  be  preferred  or 
received  into  this  House,  unless  the  same  shall  be  first 
considered  of  and  liked  by  the  clergy."  And  the  Royal 
Declaration  prefixed  to  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  sets 
forth,  "  If  any  difference  arise  about  the  external  policy 
concerning  the  injunctions,  canons,  and  other  consti- 
tutions thereunto  belonging,  the  clergy  in  their  Con- 
vocation is  to  order  and  settle  them,  having  first  ob- 
tained leave  under  our  Broad  Seal  so  to  do." 

Now  the  contention  of  the  Ritualists  is,  that  the 
violation  of  the  compact  on  the  part  of  the  State  com- 
pels them  to  obey  the  Church  rather  than  the  State. 
The  State  without,  and  even  against,  Convocation 
(that  is  to  say,  the  body  spiritual,  which  in  the  original 
compact  was  agreed  to  be  the  fitting  authority  in  spi- 
ritual matters),  has  established  two  secular  courts,  and 
those  courts  are  made  the  interpreters  of  Church  law 
in  matters  of  doctrine  and  ritual.  Of  these,  the  Judi- 
cial Committee  of  the  Privy  Council,  by  the  admission 
of  its  framer,  never  was  intended  to  act  in  ecclesiasti- 
cal causes  at  all ;  whilst  the  other  court  was  not  estab- 
lished on  the  principle  of  equal  justice  (for  it  must  be 
admitted,  that  if  one  party  exceeds,  another  falls  short 
in  its  duties),  but  with  the  object  of  "  putting  down  " 
Ritualism.  The  Ritualists  contend,  moreover,  that  the 
judgments  of  the  State-made  court  are  not  founded  on 

Q  q 


594 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAV. 


the  principles  adopted  in  other  courts,  and  there  is  no 
question  that  the  faith  of  Churchmen  in  the  Court  of 
Final  Appeal  has  received  a  severe  shock. 

We  relate  the  following  story  for  what  it  is  worth, 
solely  with  the  purpose  of  shewing  that  it  ought  either 
to  have  been  denied  at  the  time,  or  that  it  cannot  be 
w^ondered  that  clergymen  should  prefer  to  suffer  rather 
than  obey  a  judgment  which,  they  have  it  on  the  high- 
est possible  authority,  was  wrong.  After  the  Clifton 
V.  Ridsdale  case,  one  of  the  judges  stated  to  a  clergy- 
man that  the  judgment  was  based  upon  expediency ; 
that  the  court  took  upon  itself  to  promulge  as  law 
what  was  not  law  ;  that  "  the  judgment  was  an  ini- 
quitous one ;"  and  that  unanimity  did  not  prevail 
amongst  the  judges.  All  will  allow  that  those  were 
serious  charges.  A  correspondence  ensued  between 
the  then  Lord  Chancellor  and  the  judge  in  question 
(the  late  Sir  Fitzroy  Kelly),  which  carries  us  back  to 
the  days  of  the  Star  Chamber  and  the  High  Commis- 
sion Court.  The  Lord  Chancellor  did  not  deny  the 
charge.  Sir  Fitzroy  Kelly  did  not  retract  it ;  on  the 
contrary,  he  corroborated  it.  He  said  he  did  not  re- 
collect using  the  word  "iniquitous  ;"  "  if  I  had  done  so, 
it  ought  not  to  be  repeated  :"  "I  may  have  hazarded 
the  expression  that  there  was  much  of  policy  rather 
than  of  law,  though  perhaps  unconsciously  to  them- 
selves, in  the  majority  of  the  jiidges"  No  contradic- 
tion whatever  was  given ;  simply  an  order  in  Council 
was  issued,  enjoining  for  the  future  silence  on  the 
judges. 

"  It  is  not  the  first  time  in  English  history,"  said 
the  "  Spectator that  judges  have  made  law  under 
cover  of  explaining  it ;"  but,  says  Mr.  Parker  in  his 

1  May  26,  1877. 


THE  LAW  AND  THE  RITUALISTS. 


595 


Letter  to  Lord  Selborne,  though  they  "  may  make 
law,  they  cannot  make  history."  Well  might  the 
"Nonconformist"  newspaper  speak  of  "the  extra- 
ordinary reasoning  of  the  recent  judgment,  according 
to  which  the  Ornaments  Rubric  was  shewn  to  mean 
precisely  the  opposite  to  what  it  apparently  says." 
Lord  Westbury  laid  it  down  in  his  judgment  on 
"  Essays  and  Reviews,"  that  the  Court  of  Final  Ap- 
peal "  has  no  jurisdiction  or  authority  to  settle  matters 
of  faith,  or  to  determine  what  ought  in  any  particular 
to  be  the  doctrine  of  the  Church  of  England."  But 
now,  when  a  judge  openly  accuses  a  judgment  of  being 
based  on  expediency,  not  law,  no  denial  is  given  to  the 
accusation  ;  simply  an  Order  in  Council  is  issued,  that 
for  the  future  the  judgments  of  the  Privy  Council  are 
to  be  kept  secret.  So  that  it  comes  to  this,  that  dis- 
senters may  sit  in  secret  judgment  on  the  most  vital 
doctrines  of  the  Church,  and  may  make  law  according 
to  their  own  views  of  expediency.  What  prevents  the 
Privy  Council,  at  some  future  time,  deciding  on  the 
illegality  of  the  Athanasian  or  Nicene  Creed  ? 

From  one  cause  or  another  amongst  clergy  who 
have  little  sympathy  with  Ritualism,  the  Public  Wor- 
ship Regulation  Act,  and  the  court  established  under 
it,  have  come  to  be  regarded  as  public  scandals,  if  for 
no  other  reason,  yet  for  the  miserable  fiasco  which 
have  followed  all  the  proceedings  of  the  latter.  Not 
only  have  four  clergymen  been  sent  to  prison  for  a 
matter  of  conscience,  but  it  seems  as  if  scarcely  any 
judgment  can  be  delivered  by  it  without  violating 
some  recognised  rule  of  legal  procedure.  It  is  cer- 
tain that  anarchy  cannot  be  permitted  in  the  Church 
more  than  in  the  State ;  but  it  is  necessary  to  place 
the  courts  which  determine  ecclesiastical  causes  on 

Q  q  2 


596  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


a  footing  "  in  harmony  with  the  divinely-appointed 
constitution  of  the  Church,"  and  the  first  requisite, 
urges  Canon  Liddon,  will  be  the  repeal  of  the  Public 
Worship  Regulation  Act That  the  bishops  are 
awakening  to  such  a  necessity  may  be  concluded  from 
the  recent  appointment,  on  an  application  of  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  of  a  Royal  Commission  "  to  en- 
quire into  the  constitution  and  working  of  the  eccle- 
siastical courts,  as  created  and  modified  under  the 
Reformation  statutes  of  the  24th  and  25th  years  of 
King  Henry  VIII.,  and  any  subsequent  acts." 

»  Thoughts  on  Present  Church  Troubles. 


CHAPTER  III. 


NONCONFORMITY  AND  RELIGIOUS  EQUALITY. 

TTAVING  traced  the  historical  continuity  of  the 
Church  in  England  through  more  than  eighteen 
centuries,  from  the  earliest  ages  of  Christianity  to  the 
times  in  which  we  ourselves  live,  we  might  now  not 
unreasonably  have  concluded.  But  events  of  so  great 
importance  have  taken  their  rise  out  of  the  Oxford 
movement,  and  the  Church  has  of  late  entered  upon 
so  new  a  phase ;  the  State  no  longer  of  one  faith,  or 
necessarily  of  any  faith  at  all,  claiming  not  only  to 
legislate  for,  but  to  admit  the  various  denominations 
in  the  land  to  the  privileges  of  the  Church ;  that  an 
account  of  late  proceedings,  although  necessarily  short, 
may  be  interesting,  and  possibly  instructive  also. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  dissent  had 
been  increasing  with  rapid  strides.  Sherlock  states 
that  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century  dissenters 
were  only  in  proportion  of  one  to  twenty,  at  the  death 
of  George  I.  they  were  one  to  twenty-five.  Churchmen. 
In  1736  there  were  only  six  meeting-houses  in  North 
Wales,  and  thirty-five  in  the  whole  principality,  whilst 
there  were  850  churches.  Then  came  the  movements 
under  Wesley  and  Whitfield,  which,  drifting  away  gra- 
dually from  the  Church,  reanimated  the  languishing 
Nonconformity  of  the  country,  in  which  they  were 
powerfully  aided  by  the  influence  of  Lady  Hunting- 
don, whose  numerous  chaplains  seceded  and  formed 
Independent  and  Baptist  congregations.  Cleaver, 
Bishop  of  Chester,  in  his  charge  of  1790,  complains 


598  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


of  those  "  who  sought  the  Orders  of  our  Church  with 
a  view  to  set  at  defiance  her  ordinances,  to  depreciate 
her  ministry,  and  to  seduce  her  members  into  their 
unhallowed  conventicles,  under  the  arrogant  and  false 
pretensions  of  being  themselves  exclusively  Gospel 
preachers." 

The  Evangelical  movement  greatly  increased  the 
number  of  dissenters  :  Evangelical  clergy  frequently 
either  became  dissenters  themselves,  or  more  frequently 
led  their  hearers  to  become  so  :  no  fewer  than  thirteen 
young  men,  converted  by  Venn,  entered  the  ministry, 
chiefly  as  Independents;  Rowland  Hill  had  his  meet- 
ing-house in  London,  and  only  after  great  difficulty, 
and  being  refused  by  six  bishops,  obtained  deacon's 
orders ;  whilst  John  Newton,  at  Olney,  with  a  popu- 
lation of  2,500,  succeeded  in  emptying  his  church,  and 
filling  the  parish  with  dissenters  and  Antinomians*. 
Through  such  means,  when,  by  reason  of  the  rapid 
growth  of  our  manufacturies,  dense  populations  were 
swarming  from  villages  into  towns,  and  had  neither 
churches  to  attend,  nor  clergy  to  look  after  them ; 
when  the  Church  had  fallen  asleep,  dissent  assumed 
vitality ;  the  meeting-houses  in  Wales  increased  from 
thirty-five  to  one  thousand ;  so  that  at  the  beginning 
of  the  present  century.  Nonconformity  had  grown  from 
one  twenty-fifth  to  at  least  one-fourth  of  the  population  ; 
when  George  IV.  became  king,  dissent,  and  not  the 
Church,  was  in  possession  of  the  large  towns ;  by  the 
time  that  William  IV.  succeeded  him,  dissent  had  be- 
come a  power  in  the  State  ^. 

Still,  dissent  unaided  would  have  been  powerless 
against  the  Church ;  unfortunately  it  was  joined  by 
Churchmen,  who  would  have  repudiated  with  indigna- 

•  Church  Quarterly,  July,  1877.  •>  Quarterly  Review,  July,  1874. 


NONCONFORMITY  AND  RELIGIOUS  EQUALITY.  599 

tion  the  charge  of  being  dissenters,  but  whose  Church- 
manship  was  purely  political ;  the  Latitudinarian,  or, 
as  it  was  now  called,  the  "  Broad  Church "  party, 
gained  ground  in  Parliament;  a  so-called  liberality 
was  advocated  as  consonant  with  the  enlightened 
spirit  of  the  times  ;  the  idea  prevailed  that  because 
the  Church  is  established,  Parliament  had  a  right  to 
deal  with  it  as  it  pleased ;  and  so  people  professing 
the  strongest  affection  for  the  "  established "  religion, 
claimed  to  extend  its  area  by  asserting  the  unbridled 
right  of  private  judgment,  by  eliminating  all  dogmatic 
teaching,  and  substituting  a  kind  of  religious  neutrality 
in  its  place.  Hence  it  came  to  pass  that  this  Neo- 
Christianity  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  liberal  to 
all  but  the  Church.  The  purity  of  the  Faith  which 
the  Church  is  divinely  commissioned  to  teach ;  the 
possession  of  its  places  of  education,  whether  of  its 
Universities,  or  its  endowed  grammar-schools,  or 
the  national  schools  for  the  education  of  the  poor ; 
the  means  which  the  piety  and  liberality  of  Church- 
men has  confided  to  it  for  the  maintenance  of  its 
faith  and  services ;  these  are  already  taken  away  or 
threatened ;  and  no  one  can  tell  how  long  it  may  be 
before  Parliament  may  take  upon  itself  to  legislate 
further  for  the  Church,  not  only  as  to  its  disestablish- 
ment (for  this,  and  even  disendowment,  however  un- 
just, would  be  of  comparatively  little  moment),  but  to 
obtain  the  total  abolition  of  tests,  to  pass  a  law  for 
regulating  its  ritual,  or  to  interfere  with  its  doctrine, 
which,  once  gone,  can  never  be  replaced. 

The  Nonconformists  put  forth  claims  against  the 
Church  on  two  grounds  :  (i.)  of  number ;  (2.)  of  right ; 
both  of  which  it  is  necessary  to  consider. 

(i.)  On  the  ground  of  their  number  as  compared 


6oO  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


with  the  Church.  The  name  of  the  various  sects 
of  dissenters  is  legion  :  in  England  and  Wales  there 
are  172  whose  places  of  worship  have  been  certified 
to  the  Registrar-General.  There  are  Protestant  dis- 
senters, there  are  Romanist  dissenters,  and  Jews,  and 
infidels,  and  atheists.  But  what  connexion  has  the 
Romanist  with  the  Protestant  ?  What  the  Protestant 
Independent  with  the  Presbyterian  ?  how  would  the 
Romanist  like  to  be  classed  with  infidels,  or  atheists, 
or  Jews  ?  They  love  one  another  no  better  than  they 
love  the  Church,  the  destruction  of  which  is  the  only 
point  which  they  have  in  common. 

Individually  their  numbers  are  still  less  important : 
but  as  they  are  pleased  to  be  enumerated  together, 
let  us  enquire  what  their  collective  number  is.  Here 
a  difficulty  at  once  occurs,  for  the  reason  that  they 
object  to  their  numbers  being  known;  twice  (in  i860 
and  1870)  Churchmen  have  desired  a  religious  cen- 
sus, but  Dissenters  have  successfully  resisted  the 
enquiry,  and  have  preferred  to  introduce  a  test  of 
their  own,  based  on  the  sitting -accommodation  of 
their  registered  chapels.  But  such  a  test  is  obviously 
fallacious,  for  the  simple  reason  that  it  is  one  thing  to 
supply  seats,  another  to  fill  them.  Besides  this,  the 
report  of  the  Registrar- General  reveals  that  many 
buildings,  owned  by  companies  or  private  individuals, 
are  registered  as  dissenting  chapels ;  amongst  which 
are  to  be  found  : — "  Temperance  Halls,"  "  Odd  Fel- 
lows' Halls,"  "  Music  Halls,"  "  single  rooms  in  cot- 
tages," " a  bakehouse,"  "a  malthouse,"  even  "a  railway- 
arch  ;"  as  well  as  the  "  Great  Hall  of  the  Freemasons' 
Tavern,"  London  ;  the  "  Royal  Agricultural  Hall,"  Is- 
lington ;  and  the  "  Royal  Amphitheatre,"  Holborn. 

The  last  religious  census  was  taken  in  1851,  by 


NONCONFORMITY  AND  RELIGIOUS   EQUALITY.  6oi 


direction  of  the  Registrar- General,  and  it  was  then 
estimated  that  the  number  of  Churchmen  amounted 
to  9,600,000 ;  that  of  Dissenters  to  8,640,000,  or  a  pro- 
portion of  52  per  cent,  of  Churchmen,  and  48  per  cent, 
of  Dissenters.  But  to  account  for  this  improbable,  not 
to  say  fabulous,  proportion,  it  has  been  with  reason 
surmised  that  a  friendly  interchange  of  dissenting 
pulpits  on  the  census  Sunday  may  have  been  supple- 
mented by  the  exchange  of  congregations,  who  were 
thus  counted  twice  or  three  times  over. 

We  must  therefore  have  recourse  to  other  sources. 
Taking  the  following  official  returns,  we  find  that  out 
of  every  100  : — school  returns  give  72  Churchmen  to 
28  Dissenters'*;  cemetery  returns,  70  to  30**;  mar- 
riages, 75  to  25"";  army  returns,  63  to  37*^,  of  which 
37,  no  less  than  24  are  Romanists;  navy  returns,  75 
to  25^;  workhouse  returns,  79  to  21  \  These  returns 
give  an  average  of  72  per  cent,  of  Churchmen,  and 
28  of  Dissenters;  or,  if  the  army  is  deducted,  74  per 
cent,  of  Churchmen,  to  less  than  26  of  Dissenters,  in- 
cluding Romanists '. 

In  a  speech  which  he  made  at  a  meeting  of  the 
National  Society  in  Liverpool  in  April,  1872,  the 
Right  Hon.  Mr.  Hubbard  says  :  "  I  examined  all 
the  sources  of  information  open  to  me,  such  as  the 
returns  of  burials  in  consecrated  and  unconsecrated 
portions  of  public  cemeteries,  the  returns  of  marriages 

'  Report  of  Education  Department,  1871. 

^  Burials,  Session  i860.  Parliamentary  paper  560. 

'  Registrar-General's  Report  for  1873. 

'  Army  Parliamentary  paper  170,  Session  1871. 

^  Navy  Parliamentary  paper  132,  Session  1876. 

Union  Workhouse  paper  157,  Session  1876. 
'  The  above  information  is  derived  from  a  paper  entitled  "  The  Re- 
ligious Population  of  England." 


602  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


by  the  Church  and  the  registrar,  and  from  these  and 
other  returns  bearing  on  the  subject,  I  found  the  pro- 
portion of  Dissenters  of  all  kinds  vary  from  20  to  28 
per  cent.  But  a  publication  entitled,  I  think,  '  De- 
nomination Statistics,'  by  E.  G.  Ravensheim,  has  re- 
cently fallen  into  my  hands,  the  conclusion  of  the 
author  being,  that  the  proportion  of  Dissenters  of 
all  kinds,  Jews,  Roman  Catholics,  and  Secularists, 
amounts  to  22  per  cent,  of  the  population  of  England 
and  Wales." 

One  thing  therefore  of  two  is  evident,  either  that 
Nonconformists  are  in  a  minority,  varying  from  22  to 
28  per  cent. ;  or  that  a  large  proportion  of  Protestant 
dissenters  prefer  to  be  married  by  our  clergy,  and  with 
our  service ;  and  that  though  Churchmen  and  Dissent- 
ers have  each  in  the  public  cemeteries  their  separate 
chapels  and  separate  burial-grounds,  the  latter  prefer  to 
be  buried  in  our  consecrated  ground,  and  with  the  rites 
of  the  Church.  But  what,  then,  becomes  of  the  con- 
scientious grievance  ?  does  it  not  shew  that  the  burial 
grievance  was  infinitesimal  ?  If,  however.  Noncon- 
formists are  not  satisfied  with  the  result  of  our  cal- 
culations, founded  on  official  returns,  which  are  the 
most  correct  that  can  be  ascertained,  they  have  in 
their  hands  the  easiest  remedy,  viz.,  to  withdraw  their 
opposition  to  a  religious  census. 

But  however  small  their  numbers,  individually  or 
collectively,  it  was  not  unreasonable  for  the  State  to 
feel  for  tender  consciences ;  if,  for  instance,  dissenters 
had  conscientious  scruples  ^  against  paying  church-rates 
for  the  maintenance  of  our  churches  and  churchyards,  it 

Many  persons,  especially  Quakers,  have  conscientious  scruples  against 
war,  but  are  not  on  that  account  exempted  from  paying  taxes  towards  the 
army  and  navy. 


NONCONFORMITY  AND  RELIGIOUS  EQUALITY.  603 

was  right  that  they  should  be  exempted ;  although  at 
the  same  time  it  would  appear  that  their  scruples  were 
confined  to  payment,  for  they  did  not  hesitate  to  bring 
their  children  to  church  to  be  baptized,  or  their  daugh- 
ters to  be  married,  or  their  dead  to  be  buried. 

(2.)  As  to  the  claim  on  the  ground  of  right.  This 
arises  from  an  erroneous  supposition  that  the  Church 
of  England  was  founded  at  the  Reformation,  and  that 
its  property  was  at  that  time  transferred  from  the 
Roman  Church  ;  or  an  equally  mistaken  idea,  that 
the  endowments  of  the  Church  were  bestowed  upon 
it  by  the  State. 

But  what  is  the  meaning  of  the  word  Reformation  ? 
It  surely  implies  the  previous  existence  of  the  thing 
reformed,  not  the  creation  of  something  new  :  as,  for 
instance,  when  the  Reform  Act  of  1832  is  spoken  of, 
it  is  implied  that  Parliament  existed  before  in  an  un- 
reformed  state,  not  that  it  was  then  first  introduced  as 
a  factor  into  English  politics.  No  acts  of  Parliament 
can  be  cited  which  (i.)  established  at  any  time  the 
Church  of  England  ;  or  (2.)  transferred  the  buildings 
and  emoluments  from  Roman  Catholics  to  Protestants  ; 
as,  for  example,  such  acts  as  those  of  1560  and  1690, 
with  respect  to  Scotland,  whereby  the  Presbyterian 
Kirk  obtained  its  status  and  endowments. 

We  think  we  have  already  shewn  conclusively  that 
the  Church  in  England  is  older  than  Parliament ;  it 
was  the  State  that  copied  the  Church,  not  the  Church 
the  State,  and  the  National  Synods  of  the  English 
Church  which  first  suggested  the  idea  of  a  National 
Parliament ;  the  canons  passed  in  those  synods  were 
the  origin  of  our  statute  law ' ;  and  the  property  of  the 
Church  is  incomparably  the  most  ancient  form  of  pro- 
'  Green's  History  of  the  English  People,  i.  59. 


604  THE  CHURCH   OF  THE   PRESENT  DAY. 

perty  which  exists.  "  The  Ecclesiastical  Hierarchy," 
says  Mr.  Hallam™,  "never  received  any  territorial  en- 
dowment by  law,  either  under  the  Roman  Empire,  or 
the  kingdoms  erected  on  its  ruins.  But  the  voluntary 
munificence  of  princes,  as  well  as  their  subjects,  amply 
supplied  the  place  of  a  more  universal  provision."  As 
to  the  payment  of  tithes  Blackstone  says"  :  "We  can- 
not precisely  ascertain  when  tithes  were  first  introduced 
into  this  country.  Probably  they  were  contemporary 
with  the  planting  of  Christianity  amongst  the  Saxons 
by  Augustine  the  monk,  about  the  end  of  the  sixth 
century.  But  the  first  mention  of  them  which  I  have 
met  with  in  any  written  English  law,  is  in  a  consti- 
tutional decree  made  in  a  synod  held  786,  wherein 
the  payment  of  tithes  in  general  is  strongly  recom- 
mended." 

The  synod  to  which  Blackstone  refers  is  that  of 
Calcuith,  by  the  seventeenth  article  of  which  a  general 
payment  of  tithes  is  prescribed.  An  earlier  mention 
is,  however,  to  be  found  in  the  Excei^pta  of  Egbert, 
Archbishop  of  York,  a.d.  740,  where  they  are  spoken 
of  as  being  already  in  existence.  No  legislative  act 
can  be  adduced  by  which  tithes  were  first  ordained. 
About  A.D.  794,  Offa,  King  of  Mercia,  legalized  the 
pre-existing  payment  of  tithes  throughout  his  king- 
dom ;  and  in  855,  Ethelwulf  did  the  same  for  all 
England  ;  but  neither  of  them  granted  the  tithe,  but 
only  put  it  on  a  legal  footing.  They  did  not  decree 
it  as  a  new  demand,  but  as  an  old  and  established 
claim. 

"  Tithe,"  said  the  late  Sir  George  Cornewall  Lewis, 
is  of  "  the  nature  of  a  reserved  rent,  which  never  be- 
longed to  either  landlord  or  tenant."    No  wholesale 

Middle  Ages,  chap.  vii.  "  Commentaries,  bk.  ii.  c.  3. 


NONCONFORMITY  AND   RELIGIOUS  EQUALITY.  605 


gifts  to  the  Church  as  a  corporate  body  are  known 
to  exist ;  all  endowments  were  given  piecemeal  by 
single  donors  to  single  churches  ;  and  there  never  has. 
been  any  representative  body  capable  of  legally  accept- 
ing and  acquiring  property  on  behalf  of  the  Church 
of  England  in  general.  The  real  benefactor  in  each 
parish  was  the  original  donor.  From  time  immemo- 
rial land  has  been  sold  or  let  subject  to  the  Church's 
claim ;  so  that  neither  the  dissenter,  nor  the  land- 
owner, nor  the  landholder,  really  pays  anything  at 
all,  or  has  on  that  ground  reason  for  complaint. 

When  dissenters  were  admitted  to  Parliament  by 
the  repeal  of  the  Test  and  Corporation  Acts,  it  was 
asserted  that  the  step  involved  no  danger  to  the 
Church.  When  Church-rates  were  abolished,  it  was 
under  the  plea  that  the  concession  would  inaugurate 
a  period  of  peace  for  the  Church  ;  that  none  but 
Church-people  had  an  interest  in  the  fabric,  and  that 
nothing  would  disturb  the  peace  between  Church-people 
and  Nonconformists.  The  disestablishment  of  the 
Irish  Church  was  advocated  on  the  ground  that  the 
case  was  perfectly  different  from  that  of  the  Church 
in  England,  and  that  Churchmen  might  vote  for  the 
disestablishment  of  the  one  without  fear  of  being  called 
upon  to  vote  for  the  disestablishment  of  the  other. 
Since  the  first  concession,  Nonconformists  have  car- 
ried on  one  continuous  and  successful  campaign,  al- 
ways with  the  same  plausible  pretext  that  no  further 
step  was  meditated.  Fom  the  first  it  was  evident 
what  they  aimed  at  was  not  relief  to  their  consciences, 
but  religious  equality. 

The  first  change  which  the  State  made  to  satisfy 
them  was  with  respect  to  the  marriage-law.  In  1834, 
Lord  John  Russell  brought  a  bill  into  Parliament  with 


6o6 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


that  view,  and  again,  Sir  Robert  Peel  in  1835  ;  still 
they  were  not  contented,  and  both  bills  were  laid 
aside.  In  1836,  however.  Lord  John  Russell  suc- 
ceeded in  carrying  two  bills,  the  first  of  which  sanc- 
tioned a  civil  registration  of  all  births,  marriages,  and 
deaths;  in  the  second  (the  Marriage  Bill),  the  publi- 
cation of  banns  in  the  parish  church  was  retained,  but 
henceforward  dissenters  might  perform  marriages  in 
their  own  chapels. 

Lenient  as  the  State  is  towards  any  imaginary  griev- 
ance of  Nonconformists,  that  it  is  totally  indifferent  to 
the  consciences  of  the  clergy  is  shewn  by  the  Divorce 
Act  of  1857.  The  Church  teaches  that  God  has  conse- 
crated matrimony;  "that  in  it  is  signified  and  repre- 
sented the  spiritual  marriage  and  unity  betwixt  Christ 
and  His  Church ;"  it  binds  its  clerg}^  to  marry  no  per- 
sons except  such  as  absolutely  and  unconditionally 
promise  to  be  man  and  wife  "  so  long  as  they  both 
shall  live,"  and  "  until  death  them  do  part."  It  is  not 
a  little  remarkable  that  the  terms  of  this  contract  be- 
came at  the  Reformation  even  more  stringent  than 
before,  for  before  it  the  wording  was  "  till  death  us 
depart,  if  Holy  Church  it  will  ordain  °." 

By  the  Divorce  Act,  a  complete  revolution  was 
made  by  the  State  in  the  law  of  marriage.  Not  only 
was  the  jurisdiction  transferred  by  the  act  from  the 
ecclesiastical  to  a  new  court  constituted  for  the  pur- 
pose ;  not  only  does  the  act  sanction  a  dissolution  of 
marriage,  but  the  offending  party  is  free  to  marry 
again  ;  and  although  no  clergyman  is  compelled  to 
solemnize  the  new  marriage,  he  cannot  refuse  his 
church  to  any  other  clergyman  who  can  be  found 
willing  to  do  so.     That  is  to  say,  a  clergy-man  is 

°  Gleanings  from  Gladstone,  vi.  105. 


NONCONFORMITY  AND  RELIGIOUS  EQUALITY.  607 

compelled  to  lend  his  church  for  an  act  in  direct  vio- 
lation of  the  canons  of  the  Church  p,  and  for  legalizing 
adultery ;  for  no  one  can  imagine  that  any  clergyman 
can  re-marry  parties  in  direct  disobedience  to  our 
Lord's  own  words,  "  Whosoever  marrieth  her  that  is 
divorced,  committeth  adultery"  (St.  Matt.  v.  32) ;  and 
"  whosoever  shall  put  away  his  wife,  except  it  be  for 
fornication,  and  shall  marry  another,  committeth  adul- 
tery ;  and  whosoever  marrieth  her  that  is  put  away, 
doth  commit  adultery  "  (St.  Matt.  xix.  8,  9). 

Previous  to  the  Divorce  Act,  marriages  were  only 
dissolved  by  private  Acts  of  Parliament,  which  granted 
also  the  liberty  of"  re-marriage."  From  1799  to  1830 
there  were  only  eighty-two  of  these  bills,  and  from 
1830  to  1856,  ninety-nine From  1858,  when  the 
new  law  came  into  operation,  to  1877  inclusive,  the 
number  of  divorces  made  absolute,  as  taken  from  the 
official  "Judicial  Statistics,"  was  2,952;  whilst  it  ap- 
pears that  from  Michaelmas,  1879,  to  Trinity,  1880, 
about  554  decrees  (which  shews  an  immense  increase) 
were  made  absolute.  From  1861  to  1876,  according 
to  the  Registrar-General's  report  for  the  latter  year, 
696  divorced  persons  "  re-married,"  of  whom  only  1 3 
intermarried ;  so  that  683  others  were  involved  in  sin 
by  marrying  divorced  persons,  by  the  sanction  of  the 
civil  law  ^ 

Bills  for  allowing  a  man  to  marry  two  sisters  have 
thus  far  been  rejected  in  Parliament.  The  law  of  the 
English  Church,  agreeably  to  the  common  law  of 
Christendom,  that  there  is  no  difference  between  af- 

p  Canon  107  of  1604  :  "  In  all  sentences  of  divorce,  bond  to  be  taken 
for  not  marrying  during  each  other's  hfe." 

1  Guardian,  July  29,  1857.  '  Times,  August  16,  i88o. 

•  Church  Quarterly,  April,  1881. 


6o8 


THE  CHURCH   OF   THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


finity  and  consanguinity  as  a  bar  to  marriage,  is 
founded  on  the  divine  institution,  "  they  two  shall  be 
one  flesh."  But  now  that  the  matter  has  received  the 
support  of  the  second  person  in  the  realm,  and  the 
present  Prime  Minister  is  of  opinion  that,  having  the 
support  of  ministers  "  the  most  respected  in  their  seve- 
ral communities, — men  among  the  Roman  Catholics, 
the  Nonconformists,  the  Established  Church,  High 
Church  and  Low  Church,  including  such  a  man  as 
Dr.  Hook,  who  might  perhaps  be  described  as  the 
first  parish  minister  of  his  day," — the  pressure  is  too 
strong  to  be  resisted ;  we  cannot  disguise  the  proba- 
bility that  success  may  attend  the  persistent  endea- 
vours of  those  who  seek  an  alteration  in  the  law. 

In  1 84 1,  the  first  bill  for  the  abolition  of  Church- 
rates  was  introduced  into  Parliament,  but  rejected. 
But  the  dissenters  were  resolved  to  gain  their  point. 
From  1855  to  1859,  measures  for  the  abolition  were 
passed  in  the  House  of  Commons  with  increasing  ma- 
jorities ;  in  1 86 1,  however,  the  opinion  of  the  country 
veered  round,  and  the  number  of  votes  was  equal. 
In  1862,  the  measure  was  defeated  by  two,  and  in 
1863  by  ten  votes.  At  length  it  became  evident  that 
the  question  of  Church-rates  was  one  of  constant  agi- 
tation, and  therefore  of  weakness  to  the  Church ;  so, 
in  1868,  Mr.  Gladstone  was  enabled  to  pass  a  bill, 
founded  upon  a  measure  which  he  had  advocated  two 
years  before,  viz.  the  substitution  of  a  voluntary  prin- 
ciple, instead  of  the  compulsory  payment,  and  the 
"Compulsory  Church-rate  Abolition  Act"  became 
law 

'  It  was  provided  that  that  act  should  not  affect  the  rights  of  burial, 
to  which  the  inhabitants  of  the  district  were  entitled,  in  the  churchyard 
of  the  mother  church. 


NONCONFORMITY  AND  RELIGIOUS  EQUALITY.  609 


An  attempt  had  been  made,  as  early  as  1834,  to 
obtain  fuller  privileges  for  the  dissenters  at  the  Uni- 
versities. At  Oxford,  they  could  not  gain  admission 
at  all  without  signing  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  ;  but 
at  Cambridge,  a  student  was  not  required  until  the 
B.A.  degree  to  declare  himself  a  bond  fide  member 
of  the  English  Church.  No  alteration,  however,  was 
at  that  time  made  with  regard  to  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge;  but  in  1836  London  University  was  estab- 
lished by  Royal  Charter,  for  the  purpose  of  giving 
dissenters  a  university  education,  and  an  annual  grant 
of  ^5,000  was  made  by  Government,  without  reference 
to  religious  belief  But  this  was  not  enough.  In 
1850,  a  Commission  was  issued  for  enquiring  into  the 
state  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge ;  great  changes  were 
made,  with  the  effect  of  weakening  the  influence  of  the 
Church,  in  the  laws  and  studies  of  those  Universities. 
In  1854,  an  act  was  passed  for  abolishing  religious 
tests  at  matriculation;  in  1856,  tests,  except  for  di- 
vinity degrees,  were  abolished  at  Cambridge. 

Persons  of  any  faith,  or  of  no  faith  at  all,  being  ad- 
mitted to  the  benefits  of  the  University,  the  next  step 
gained  was,  when  in  1871  the  University  Tests  Act, 
which  in  1866  and  in  1868  had  been  the  protege  of 
the  present  Lord  Coleridge,  became  law  under  the  first 
Ministry  of  Mr.  Gladstone.  By  that  act.  Noncon- 
formists were  entitled  to  become  Fellows  and  Tutors 
of  Colleges,  although,  for  the  moment,  clerical  Head- 
ships and  Fellowships  were  spared.  But,  under  the 
Commission  appointed  in  1877  (supposing  that  its  pro- 
posals are  ratified  by  Parliament),  it  appears  that  all 
clerical  members  on  the  foundation  of  colleges  at  Ox- 
ford, except  a  minimum  of  one  at  some  colleges,  of  two 
at  St.  John's  and  Magdalen  ;  and  of  the  Dean,  six 

R  r 


6io 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


Canons,  and  three  Students  at  Christ  Church,  and  the 
Headship  of  Pembroke,  which  could  not  afford  to  dis- 
pense with  the  canonry  at  Gloucester  attached  to  it, 
are  doomed. 

The  two  great  societies  for  promoting  elementary 
education  were,  the  National  Society,  and  the  British 
and  Foreign  School  Society;  and,  until  1833,  these 
societies  had  carried  on  the  work  without  Parlia- 
mentary assistance.  In  that  year,  however,  small  Par- 
liamentary grants  were,  for  the  first  time,  made,  with 
the  understanding  that  they  involved  no  alteration  in 
the  religious  teaching  of  the  schools.  In  1839  these 
grants  were  increased ;  an  education  department  was 
instituted,  and  a  Government  inspector  appointed  to 
examine  the  schools  ;  but  the  public  grants  were  sup- 
plemented by  the  voluntary  contributions  of  Church- 
men, which  were  at  least  five  times  as  large  as  that 
granted  by  Government ;  and  no  change  was  made 
in  the  religious  instruction,  the  National  Society  con- 
tinuing the  work  for  which  it  was  founded,  viz.  "  the 
education  of  the  poor  in  the  principles  of  the  esta- 
blished Church." 

This  state  of  things,  although  the  Government 
grants  fell  by  degrees  from  ^140,000,  till  in  1865  they 
had  dwindled  down  to  /^ig,ooo,  continued  till  1870, 
when  the  Education  Act  was  passed,  which  involved  an 
entire  separation  of  the  State  from  all  concern  in  the 
religious  instruction  in  elementary  schools.  By  that 
act,  education  was  rendered  compulsory ;  all  England 
was  divided  into  school  districts,  under  the  manage- 
ment of  elected  school-boards,  provision  being  made 
for  the  building  and  maintenance  of  the  schools  out 
of  the  local  rates.  A  clause  known  as  the  Cowper 
Temple  clause,  enacting  that  "  no  religious  Catechism, 


NONCONFORMITY  AND   RELIGIOUS  EQUALITY.  6ll 


or  religious  formulary,  which  is  distinctive  of  any  par- 
ticular denomination,  shall  be  taught  in  the  school,'' 
whilst  it  has,  at  first  sight,  the  appearance  of  impar- 
tiality, proves  on  examination  to  be  hostile  to  the 
Church,  and  the  Church  alone.  For,  (i.)  It  is  not 
improbable  that  the  secularists,  being  an  amalgamation 
of  all  sects  of  professing  Christians,  and  of  no  Chris- 
tians at  all,  may  have  a  majority  on  the  board,  in  which 
case  they  can  have  their  way,  and  exclude  all  religious 
teaching ;  thus  the  clause  is  a  direct  advantage  to 
them.  (2.)  It  is  most  improbable  that  any  ofie  of  the 
numerous  sects  of  dissenters  could  have  a  majority, 
so  as  to  be  able  to  enforce  its  own  teaching ;  the 
clause,  therefore,  is  no  disadvantage  to  them.  (3.)  On 
the  other  hand,  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the 
Church,  having  a  majority  in  the  country  at  least 
twice  as  great  as  all  the  Nonconformists  put  together 
may  have  a  majority  on  the  school-board,  in  which 
case  it  is  excluded  from  teaching  its  Catechism  or 
religious  formularies  ;  so  that  the  clause  is  unfair  to 
the  Church,  and  the  Church  alone. 

The  Church  schools  have  also  had  to  contend 
against  serious  disadvantages,  owing  to  the  fact  that 
the  Government  school-boards,  being  able  to  charge 
an  arbitrary  expenditure  on  the  local  rates",  tempt 
teachers  from  other  schools  by  profuse  salaries,  and 
often  draw  away  their  children,  by  reducing,  or  alto- 
gether remitting  the  fees  ^. 

"  The  last  report  of  the  Committee  of  Council  on  Education,  with 
reference  to  the  comparative  expense  of  Board  and  Voluntary  Schools, 
says  :  "  We  see  no  good  reason  why  the  average  cost  per  child  in  board- 
schools  {£2  2s.  old.)  should  be  so  much  as  22  per  cent.  {js.  6ld.)  in  excess 
of  the  average  cost  per  child  in  voluntary  schools  {£1  i^s.6d.). 

The  effect  of  the  act  on  Church  schools  will  be  mentioned  in  the 
next  chapter. 

R  r  2 


6l2 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


The  disestablishment  of  the  Irish  Church,  whilst  it 
serves  as  a  warning  of  what  the  State  may  some  day 
do  to  the  established  Church  in  England,  concerns  us 
as  being  the  severance  of  a  connexion  between  "  the 
United  Church  of  England  and  Ireland."  In  March, 
1869,  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  had  lately  become  Prime 
Minister,  with  a  majority  of  120  members  pledged  to 
support  him  in  the  measure,  brought  forward  a  bill 
for  the  disestablishment  of  the  Irish  Church.  On 
January  i,  1871,  the  Irish  Church  ceased  to  be  recog- 
nized by  the  State ;  the  Crown  resigned  its  right 
of  appointing  the  Irish  bishops,  who  lost  their  seats 
in  the  House  of  Lords ;  the  property  of  the  Irish 
Church,  which  was  estimated  at  ^16,000,000,  was 
applied,  after  satisfying  the  life-interests  of  incumbents 
and  other  necessary  charges,  "  to  the  relief  of  un- 
avoidable calamities  and  suffering,  in  such  manner  as 
Parliament  shall  hereafter  direct." 

Another,  and  that  the  most  important  concession  to 
dissenters  must  be  mentioned,  viz.  the  "  Burial  Laws 
Amendment  Act  "  of  1880.  The  dissenters'  contention 
against  Church  -  rates,  that  it  was  unfair  that  they 
should  pay  towards  that  in  which  they  had  no  interest, 
had  now  turned  into  a  claim  that  they  should  have  an 
equal  interest  with  the  Church  in  that  towards  which 
they  paid  nothing.  Previously  to  the  passing  of  that 
act,  every  parishioner  had  a  right  to  be  buried  in  the 
parish  churchyard  unless  he  were  unbaptized  (Baptism 
by  dissenters or  laymen,  or  women,  so  long  as  it  was 

^  It  was,  however,  undecided  whether  such  Baptism  entitled  an  adult 
to  Christian  burial  according  to  the  rites  of  the  English  Church,  unless 
he  ratified  his  Baptism,  and  was  admitted  to  the  full  communion  of  the 
Church  by  Confirmation  ;  and  the  late  Bishop  of  Exeter,  in  the  celebrated 
Helstone  case,  determined  that  it  did  not.  (Prideaux,  Guide  to  Church- 
wardens, p.  409.) 


NONCONFORMITY  AND  RELIGIOUS  EQUALITY.  613 


performed  by  water  in  the  name  of  the  Trinity,  was 
sufficient),  or  a  suicide,  or  excommunicate,  with  the 
burial-service  of  the  Church  of  England ;  and  in  no 
case  where  the  service  was  prescribed  might  it  be 
omitted  \  So  that,  if  any  body  had  reason  to  complain, 
it  was  not  the  dissenters,  who  paid  nothing  to  the 
Church-rates,  but  the  parish  priest,  who  was  compelled 
by  law  to  bury  not  only  Nonconformist  parishioners, 
but  also  notoriously  evil  livers.  But  by  the  act  of  1880, 
any  relation,  or  friend,  or  legal  representative  of  a 
deceased  person  may,  by  giving  forty -eight  hours 
notice  in  writing  to  the  incumbent,  conduct  a  funeral 
within  the  churchyard  of  the  parish  or  ecclesiastical 
district,  either  with  or  without  a  service  ;  or  he  may 
invite  some  person  or  persons  to  conduct  a  Christian 
and  orderly  religious  service  at  the  grave,  the  Christian 
service  including  "every  religious  service  used  by  any 
church,  denomination,  or  person  professing  to  be  Chris- 
tian." The  representative  of  the  deceased  person  may 
choose  any  day  for  the  service  (except  Sunday,  Good 
Friday,  and  Christmas  Day),  and  the  hour  (within 
certain  prescribed  limits),  provided  that  no  other  ser- 
vice has  been  previously  arranged  in  the  church  or 
churchyard  for  that  hour.  After  the  burial,  he  must, 
on  the  same  or  following  day,  send  a  certificate,  accord- 
ing to  a  prescribed  form,  to  the  incumbent,  who  is 
required  to  enter  it  in  the  register,  stating  not  by 
whom  it  was  performed,  but  by  whom  it  was  certified 
under  the  act. 

In  1870,  Parliament  took  upon  itself  to  infringe 
the  indelibility  of  Holy  Orders  by  the  "  Clergy  Dis- 

'  The  clergyman,  however,  could,  according  to  the  rubric,  use  his  dis- 
cretion of  either  taking  the  corpse  into  the  church,  or  proceeding  at 
once  to  the  grave. 


6 14  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 

abilities  Act,"  which  professed  to  enable  a  clergyman 
"to  relinquish  the  office  of  priest  or  deacon"  by  a 
given  ecclesiastical  form ;  after  six  months,  the  bishop 
is  required  to  register  the  deed,  and  all  civil  disabilities 
are  removed.  A  machinery  also  is  provided  for  his 
return,  should  he  desire  it. 

In  the  Owston  Ferry  case  of  1875,  it  was  decided 
by  the  Privy  Council  against  the  diocesan,  the  Bishop 
of  Lincoln,  and  the  incumbent  of  the  parish,  as  also 
the  judgment  of  the  Chancellor  of  the  diocese,  and 
the  Dean  of  Arches,  that  a  Wesleyan  minister  may 
still  style  himself  Reverend  on  a  tombstone,  for  that 
the  title  is  not  one  of  honour  and  dignity,  and  does 
not  signify  that  a  person  is  in  Holy  Orders. 

The  claims  of  dissenters  having  been  conceded  to 
officiate  in  consecrated  churchyards  (the  furthest  step 
they  have  as  yet  advanced),  it  remains  to  see  how  long 
it  will  be  before  their  right  is  advocated  of  officiating 
(as  Dr.  Arnold  proposed  fifty  years  ago)  in  our  parish 
churches  also.  Speaking  at  Carlisle  in  January,  1876, 
Sir  Wilfrid  Lawson  said:  "Well,  but  I  will  be  honest. 
I  don't  say.  Let  us  get  rid  of  this,  and  the  Church  will 
be  the  stronger.  No  !  I  admit  fully,  let  me  be  honest 
about  it,  that  if  you  let  the  Nonconformist  into  the 
churchyard,  it  is  only  a  step  towards  letting  him  into 
the  church.  It  is  far  better  to  be  honest  about  the 
thing \" 

•  Church  Quarterly,  January,  1877. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 

n^HAT  the  last  fifty  years  have  witnessed  a  mar- 
vellous  progress  in  the  Church ;  in  the  tone  and 
influence  of  the  clergy ;  in  the  zeal  of  the  laity ;  in  the 
revival  of  suffragan  bishops  ;  in  the  increased  number 
and  improved  character  of  daily  and  saints'-day  ser- 
vices and  Holy  Communions  ;  in  the  work  of  missions  ; 
in  the  spread  of  education  ;  in  the  restoration  and 
building,  as  well  as  in  the  architecture,  of  churches ;  in 
the  substitution  of  the  offertory  for  pew-rents ;  in  a 
word,  in  every  department  of  practical  Church-work, 
all  will  readily  admit.  The  rapid  change  which  fol- 
lowed the  Oxford  movement  is  thus  described  by 
Mr.  Gladstone  ^ :  "  The  outward  face  of  divine  service 
began  to  be  renovated,  and  the  shameful  condition  of 
the  sacred  fabrics  was  readily  amended.  .  .  .  The  mis- 
sionary arm  of  the  Church  began  to  exhibit  a  vigour 
wholly  unknown  in  former  years.  Noble  efforts  were 
made,  under  the  auspices  of  the  chief  bishop  of  the 
Church,  to  provide  for  the  unsatisfied  wants  of  the  Me- 
tropolis. The  great  scheme  of  the  colonial  episcopate 
was  founded.  .  .  .  The  tone  of  public  schools  and  uni- 
versities was  steadily  raised.  The  greatest  change 
of  all  was  within  the  body  of  the  clergy.  .  .  .  The 
spectacle,  on  the  whole,  was  what  we  are  told  of  a 
Russian  spring ;  almost  in  a  day  the  snow  dissolves, 
the  ice  breaks  up,  and  the  whole  earth  is  covered  with 
a  rush  of  verdure." 

But  much  required  to  be  done  before  the  Church 

•  Autobiography,  p.  24. 


6l6  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE   PRESENT  DAY. 


was  in  a  position  to  effect  its  own  recover}-.  Such 
scandals  had  crept  into  it  as  to  render  legislation  in- 
dispensable ;  and  questionable  as  is  the  principle  of 
robbing  the  Church  with  one  hand  to  endow  it  with 
the  other,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  to  the  Eccle- 
siastical Commission  much  of  the  present  vitality  of 
the  Church  is  attributable. 

In  1835,  two  comimissions  were  issued,  to  consider 
the  state  of  the  several  dioceses  in  England  and  Wales, 
with  reference  to  the  amount  of  their  revenues,  the 
more  equal  distribution  of  episcopal  duties,  and  the 
prevention  of  the  necessity  of  attaching  benefices  by 
commendam  to  bishoprics ;  to  consider  also  the  state 
of  the  cathedral  and  collegiate  churches  ;  and  to  make 
the  best  provision  for  the  cure  of  souls,  with  special 
reference  to  the  residence  of  the  clergy  in  their  re- 
spective benefices. 

On  the  recommendation  of  the  members  of  those 
commissions  the  Ecclesiastical  Commission  was  con- 
stituted. A  state  of  things  was  brought  to  light  which 
surprised  even  the  sincerest  admirers  of  the  Esta- 
blished Church.  Of  the  whole  income  of  the  Church, 
amounting  to  ^3,490,497,  no  less  than  ^435,046  went 
to  the  bishops  and  other  dignitaries ;  benefices  were 
of  very  unequal  value ;  whilst  some  were  very  lucra- 
tive, 2,623  were  under  ^120  a-year,  and  2,713  others 
under  ;^2  2o;  and  there  were  eleven  livings,  one  of 
which  contained  800  inhabitants,  under  ^10;  so  that 
of  the  whole  total  of  more  than  10,000  livings,  one- 
half  were  less  than  ^220  a-year,  and  one-fourth  under 
;^i20;  there  were  also  4,000  livings  without  houses 
fit  for  residence 

Two  Letters  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  on  the  Origin  and 
Progress  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Commission  (1863). 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


If  regarded  with  respect  to  the  amount  of  work  to 
be  done,  the  inequality  of  hvings  was  still  more  appa- 
rent ;  for  whereas  some  small  country  livings  were 
worth  ^3,000,  ^4,000,  and  even  ^7,000  a-year,  large 
parishes  in  London,  Lancashire,  and  Yorkshire,  con- 
taining 20,000  or  30,000  inhabitants,  often  paid  their 
clergyman  less  than  ^150  a-year,  and  that  frequently 
dependent  upon  pew-rents. 

The  Church's  revenues  were  also  very  unequally 
distributed  amongst  the  bishops ;  for  whilst  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  enjoyed  an  income  of  ^18,090; 
the  Bishop  of  London,  ^13,890;  of  Durham,  ^19,480; 
the  Bishop  of  Oxford  had  only  ^1,600;  of  Rochester, 
;^i,400;  of  Llandaff,  ^1,170;  whilst  the  see  of  Glou- 
cester, at  that  time  unconnected  with  Bristol,  was 
worth  only  ^700  a-year. 

Under  such  circumstances,  the  bishops  themselves 
were  frequently  pluralists.  At  one  time,  the  Bishops 
of  Llandaff,  Oxford,  and  Rochester,  were  respectively 
Deans  of  St.  Paul's,  Canterbury,  and  Worcester.  The 
Bishops  of  Gloucester  and  Lichfield  held  stalls  at 
Westminster.  The  Bishop  of  Carlisle  was  a  Pre- 
bendary of  St.  Paul's  ;  the  Bishop  of  St.  David's, 
Dean  of  Durham,  and  Dean  of  Brecon  as  well. 

To  remedy  the  evils  resulting  from  such  a  state  of 
things,  three  Acts  of  Parliament  were  passed,  the  "  Epis- 
copal," the  "  Pluralities,"  and  the  "  Cathedral"  Acts. 
By  the  Episcopal  Act  of  1836,  two  new  sees  (the  first 
since  the  Reformation)  of  Manchester  and  Ripon  were 
founded,  and  the  translation  of  bishops  was,  by  nearly 
equalizing  the  revenues  of  all  but  the  five  principal  sees, 
to  a  great  extent  obviated.  The  Pluralities  Act,  ia 
1838,  provided  for  each  parish  its  resident  clergyman. 
To  obtain  the  money  that  was  required,  the  Cathedral 


6i8 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


Act  was  passed  under  strong  opposition  in  1840. 
Under  the  provisions  of  the  last  act,  some  360  pre- 
bendal  estates  attached  to  the  cathedrals  of  the  old 
foundation ;  and  the  corporate  incomes  of  all  canons 
beyond  four  in  (with  a  few  exceptions)  all  the  other  ca- 
thedrals ;  and  the  revenues  of  the  separate  estates  of 
deans  and  residentiary  canons,  as  distinguished  from 
their  corporate  revenues  ;  and  the  proceeds  of  sinecure 
rectories,  were  appropriated  to  provide,  when  they 
should  all  be  vacated,  ^134,251  a-year  for  the  augmen- 
tation of  small  livings.  It  was,  however,  some  time  be- 
before  the  dii'ect  advantage  of  this  act  was  felt ;  for  in 
1843  Sir  Robert  Peel  forestalled  the  future  increment  of 
the  revenue,  by  inducing  Parliament  to  impose  upon  the 
fund  a  charge  of  ^30,000  a-year,  for  the  creation,  with 
a  stipend  of  ^150  a-year  each,  of  two  hundred  new 
districts  in  the  mineral,  shipping,  and  manufacturing 
towns,  and  of  ^18,000  a-year  to  repay  to  Queen 
Anne's  Bounty  the  interest  of  the  sum  borrowed  to 
effect  such  anticipation  of  its  future  income  ^  But  in 
i860  the  Commissioners  were  enabled  to  announce, 
that  no  fewer  than  1388  livings  had  been  augmented 
and  endowed,  to  the  amount  of  ^98,900  a-year,  to 
which  had  been  added  land  and  tithe-rent  charge 
amounting  to  ^9,600  a-year. 

Another  important  act,  the  "  Tithe  Commutation " 
Act,  passed  in  1836,  did  much  towards  promoting 
a  better  feeling  between  the  clergy  and  the  agricul- 
tural interest,  by  providing,  instead  of  tithes  being- 
paid  in  kind,  for  a  general  commutation  into  a  rent- 
charge  upon  the  land,  valued  according  to  the  average 
price  of  corn  during  the  previous  seven  years. 

A  most  important  point  was  gained  by  the  partial 

'  Quarterly  Review,  January,  1868. 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


619 


revival,  after  a  suppression  of  more  than  130  years, 
of  the  functions  of  Convocation ;  a  revival  for  which 
the  Church  is  mainly  indebted  to  a  layman,  the  late 
Mr.  Henry  Hoare,  and  the  late  Bishop  Wilberforce. 
As  early  as  1840,  when,  as  Archdeacon  of  Surrey,  he 
had  a  seat  in  the  Lower  House,  the  latter  urged  that 
the  meetings  of  Convocation  should  be  something  more 
than  listening  to  a  Latin  speech  and  choosing  a  Pro- 
locutor. From  that  time  the  desire  for  its  revival 
grew.  On  November  24,  1847,  it  was  proposed  that 
"  an  address  should  be  presented  to  the  Upper  House, 
asking  their  lordships  to  unite  with  the  Lower  in 
a  humble  petition  to  the  Queen,  praying  for  her  royal 
licence  that  Convocation  might  be  permitted  to  consult 
upon  the  best  means  of  increasing  the  efficiency  of  the 
Church."  The  matter,  however,  at  that  time  came 
to  nothing.  But  the  Privy  Council  judgment  in  the 
Gorham  case  plainly  shewed  the  necessity  of  some 
representative  assembly  more  fitted  to  legislate  for 
the  Church  than  the  House  of  Commons,  or  the  Ju- 
dicial Committee  of  the  Privy  Council.  In  February, 
185 1,  Convocation  met  for  the  first  time  for  the  pur- 
pose of  receiving  petitions,  and  addresses  were  pre- 
sented from  the  Lower  to  the  Upper  House  ;  but  the 
Archbishop  (Sumner)  prorogued  the  assembly.  In 
July,  however,  a  lay  peer.  Lord  Redesdale,  moved  for 
copies  of  the  petitions,  and  spoke  in  favour  (as  also 
did  Bishop  Blomfield)  of  the  revival  of  Convocation. 
Archbishops  Sumner  and  Whately  opposed  the  mo- 
tion, which  Lord  Lansdowne  described  as  "  novel,  far- 
fetched, and  dangerous :"  it  was,  however,  carried. 
In  1852,  a  new  ministry  having  been  formed  under 
Lord  Aberdeen,  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  (Bishop  Wilber- 
force), who  was  now  joined  by  the  Bishops  of  Exeter, 


623 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


Salisbury,  and  Chichester,  protested  against  the  Arch- 
bishop acting  sine  coJisensii  fratrtim  ;  and  in  spite  of 
the  opposition  of  the  Court,  he  prevailed  with  the  new 
Premier,  and  in  January,  1854,  one  day  for  delibera- 
tion was  allowed  to  Convocation.  Since  that  time. 
Convocation  has  progressed  step  by  step  ;  in  1856,  it 
deliberated  on  a  rearrangement  of  the  Church  Ser- 
vices;  in  1857  and  1858,  it  had  so  far  advanced,  that 
the  Archbishop  declared  it  would  be  out  of  the  ques- 
tion any  longer  to  stop  its  debates.  On  the  appoint- 
ment of  the  present  Archbishop  of  York,  the  Convoca- 
tion of  the  northern  province  was  revived,  and  has 
since  been  partially  reformed.  In  1872,  an  important 
advance  was  made  by  the  issue  of  the  royal  licence 
and  "  Letters  of  Business,"  enabling  Convocation  to 
consider  the  rubrics,  with  a  view  to  legislation.  A  new 
Lectionary,  and  a  shortened  form  of  week-day  service 
has  been  sanctioned ;  and  now  Convocation  occupies 
a  position  in  the  country  which  no  prudent  statesman 
can  afford  to  overlook. 

Together  with  the  revival  of  Convocation  must  be 
mentioned  another  important  feature  in  the  synodical 
action  of  the  Church,  viz.  the  revival  of  Diocesan 
Conferences  and  Synods ;  and,  what  is  of  equal  im- 
portance, the  establishment  of  Church  Congresses, 
which,  having  originated  in  1863  at  Manchester,  have 
continued  from  year  to  year  to  the  present  time. 

The  development  of  late  years  of  the  colonial  epis- 
copate has  been  eminently  satisfactory.  During  the 
first  quarter  of  the  century,  there  were  only  five  co- 
lonial bishoprics,  Nova  Scotia,  Quebec,  Calcutta,  Ja- 
maica, and  Barbados,  jurisdiction  in  other  parts  of 
the  world  being  exercised  by  the  Bishop  of  London, 
who  had  been  empowered  by  an  Order  in  Council  of 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


1726  "to  exercise  spiritual  jurisdiction  in  the  planta- 
tions;" this  jurisdiction  he  discharged  through  com- 
missioners, who,  being  only  in  priest's  orders,  could 
not  of  course  perform  episcopal  functions. 

In  1840,  the  number  of  colonial  sees  had  in- 
creased to  ten  ^  In  April  of  that  year,  Bishop  Blom- 
field  wrote  a  letter  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
which  led  to  the  establishment  of  the  Colonial  Bishop- 
rics' Council ;  and  a  meeting  to  consider  the  increase 
of  the  colonial  episcopate  was  held  in  Willis's  rooms. 
The  cause  of  the  colonial  episcopate  had  already 
taken  deep  root ;  the  Christian  Knowledge  Society 
voted  ^10,000;  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of 
the  Gospel  ^5,000,  to  which  soon  afterwards  it  added 
;^2,5oo;  the  Church  Missionary  Society  ^600  for 
New  Zealand  :  so  that  on  St.  Bartholomew's  Day, 
1842,  no  fewer  than  five  colonial  bishops  (amongst 
them  a  bishop  for  Gibraltar)  were  consecrated  ;  in  little 
more  than  twenty  years,  twenty  more  colonial  sees 
were  founded ;  at  the  present  time,  the  Church  of 
England  numbers  sixty-one  colonial  bishoprics,  whilst, 
in  connexion  with  the  Church,  there  are  twelve  mis- 
sionary bishops  in  countries  not  subject  to  the  British 
Crown ;  and  we  must  not  here  omit  to  mention  one 
missionary  bishop  in  particular,  the  late  Bishop  Pat- 
teson,  who,  in  1871,  received  the  crown  of  martyrdom 
in  the  island  of  Nukupu,  one  of  the  Santa  Cruz  group, 
in  Melanesia, 

To  bring  together  the  colonial  bishops  of  the  Angli- 
can communion  throughout  the  world  was  the  object 
of  two  conferences  held  at  Lambeth,  under  the  presi- 
dency of  the  see  of  St.  Augustine ;  the  first,  to  which 

These  were  Nova  Scotia,  Quebec,  Calcutta,  Jamaica,  Barbados, 
Australia,  Madras,  Bombay,  Newfoundland,  and  Toronto. 


622 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


every  bishop  was  invited  except  Dr.  Colenso  (whose 
heresy  was  one  chief  cause  of  the  conference)  under 
Archbishop  Longley  in  1867,  being  attended  by  76; 
the  second  in  1878,  attended  by  exactly  100  bishops. 
The  Encychcal  pubHshed  by  the  first  of  these  con- 
ferences, impHcitly  condemned  two  of  Dr.  Colenso's 
most  prominent  errors,  the  denial  of  the  inspiration  of 
the  Holy  Scriptures,  and  the  Very  Godhead  of  the 
One  Person  of  our  Incarnate  Lord.  We  cannot  re- 
frain from  quoting  some  sentences  of  wisdom  which 
proceeded  from  the  first  of  these  conferences,  words 
expressive  of  the  Catholic  position  of  our  Church,  and 
worthy  of  remembrance  in  these  days  of  contention  : 
"  We  propose,"  said  the  venerable  President,  Arch- 
bishop Longley,  "  to  discuss  matters  of  practical  in- 
terest, and  pronounce  what  we  deem  expedient  in 
resolutions,  which  may  serve  as  safe  guides  to  future 
action!'  "  We  do  here  solemnly  record  our  conviction, 
that  unity  will  be  most  effectually  promoted  by  main- 
taining the  Faith  in  its  purity  and  integrity,  as  taught 
in  the  Holy  Scriptures,  held  by  the  Primitive  Church, 
summed  up  in  the  Creeds,  and  affirmed  by  the  undisputed 
General  Cotmcils!'  A  Pastoral  was  addressed  to  "the 
faithful  in  Jesus  Christ,  the  priests  and  deacons  and 
the  lay  members  of  the  Church  of  Christ  in  communion 
with  the  Anglican  branch  of  the  Church  Catholic,"  to 
"  hold  fast  the  Creeds,  and  the  pure  worship  and  order 
which,  of  God's  grace,  ye  have  inherited  from  the 
Primitive  Church."  Here,  then,  is  an  authority  to 
which,  agreeably  to  the  Word  of  Christ,  "  Tell  it  unto 
the  Church,"  we  may  refer,  instead  of  going  to  law  one 
with  another ;  the  Primitive  Church,  the  Creeds,  Gene- 
ral Councils  are  laid  down  as  "the  safe  guides  to  future 
action;"  here  is  the  standard  by  which  those  people 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


623 


who  are  constantly  complaining  of  others  should  judge 
themselves  as  to  the  respect  they  themselves  pay  to 
the  voice  of  the  united  episcopate. 

The  foundation  of  the  bishopric  of  Gibraltar  is  of 
great  interest,  for  more  reasons  than  one.  In  1842, 
the  care  of  the  English  congregations  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean was  transferred  to  that  see  from  the  Bishop  of 
London;  and  in  1869  a  Foreign  Office  Circular  was 
issued,  that  "the  spiritual  superintendence  hitherto  ex- 
ercised by  the  Bishop  of  London  over  the  ministers 
and  congregations  of  English  churches  throughout 
Spain  and  Portugal,  on  the  coast  of  Morocco,  and  in 
the  Canary  Islands,  as  well  as  over  the  like  congrega- 
tions in  the  kingdom  of  Italy,  on  the  shores  of  the 
Black  Sea,  and  in  the  Lower  Danube,  shall  henceforth 
devolve  on  the  Bishop  of  Gibraltar."  So  that  for 
English  residents  in  various  parts  of  the  Continent, 
there  are  now  two,  but  still  only  two,  bishops  ^ 

But  there  is  another  circumstance  which  makes  the 
foundation  of  the  Gibraltar  bishopric  of  especial  in- 
terest. At  the  public  meeting  in  Willis's  rooms  before 
referred  to,  the  importance  was  urged  of  promoting 
a  friendly  understanding  between  the  English  Church 
and  the  Patriarch  and  prelates  of  the  Greek  Church. 
With  that  view,  Mr.  Tomlinson,  one  of  the  Secretaries 
of  the  Society  for  Promoting  Christian  Knowledge 
(afterwards  the  first  Bishop  of  Gibraltar),  was  de- 
spatched with  commendatory  letters  from  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  and  the  Bishop  of  London  ;  and 
he  received  so  friendly  a  reception  from  the  Oriental 
bishops,  that  it  was  determined  to  establish  an  English 

'  The  work  of  appointing  and  maintaining  these  chaplaincies  is  mainly- 
undertaken  by  two  Societies,  that  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  in 
Foreign  Parts,  and  the  Colonial  and  Continental  Church  Society. 


624  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 

bishopric  at  Valetta,  for  the  sake  of  English  congre- 
gations in  the  Mediterranean,  as  well  as  a  convenient 
point  of  communication  ''with  the  bishops  of  the  ancient 
Churches  of  the  East,  to  luhom  our  Church  has  been  for 
centuries  known  only  by  name^  T  but  as  there  was 
already  a  Roman  Catholic  see  at  Malta,  Gibraltar,  in- 
stead of  Valetta,  was  ultimately  chosen  as  the  see 
of  the  bishop. 

This  opening  of  communication  with  the  bishops  of 
the  Eastern  Church  naturally  brings  us  to  the  present 
position  of  our  Church  with  relation  to  the  other 
Churches  of  Christendom. 

The  original  intention  of  promoting,  through  the 
bishopric  of  Gibraltar,  friendly  relations  with  the  East- 
ern Church  has  never  been  lost  sight  of  Dr.  Trower, 
formerly  Bishop  of  Glasgow,  who  succeeded  to  the 
see  of  Gibraltar  in  1863,  maintained  the  friendly  inter- 
course which  was  so  auspiciously  begun,  and  when  on 
a  visit  to  Athens,  was  kindly  received  by  the  arch- 
bishop of  that  city.  Again,  Bishop  Harris,  who  was 
consecrated  to  the  see  in  1868,  met  with  a  most  cordial 
reception  from  the  bishops  of  the  Greek  Church  ;  and, 
on  one  occasion,  when  he  was  at  Constantinople,  he 
found  the  Protosyncellus  of  the  Patriarch  reading  care- 
fully the  Greek  copy  of  our  Prayer- Book  which  had 
been  presented,  at  the  Patriarch's  desire,  by  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  and  marking  in  pencil  certain 
difficult  passages.  The  present  bishop,  who  succeeded 
in  1873,  has  experienced  the  same  kindly  treatment 
from  the  Eastern  Church.  At  the  dedication,  in  1874, 
of  an  English  church  at  Patras,  fourteen  Greek  clergy- 
men who  were  present,  expressed  a  wish  for  union 
between  the  Greek  and  English  Churches  ;  a  similar 

'  Declaration  of  the  Archbishops  and  Bishops. 


CHURCH  PROGRESS, 


625 


wish  was  expressed  by  the  Archbishop  of  Corfu,  the 
Archbishop  of  Syra  and  Tenos,  the  Patriarch  of  Con- 
stantinople, and  other  heads  of  the  Eastern  Church  ; 
so  that  this  object  of  the  foundation  of  the  Gibraltar 
see  must  be  pronounced  to  have  been  eminently  suc- 
cessful. 

The  immediate  consequence  of  the  Vatican  Council 
of  1870  was  a  disastrous  schism  in  the  Roman  Church  ; 
the  "  Old  Catholics,"  as  they  called  themselves,  refused 
to  be  bound  by  the  new  dogma  of  Papal  Infallibility, 
and  they  were  confirmed  in  their  refusal  by  the  ex- 
communication of  Dr.  Dollinger  by  the  Archbishop 
of  Munich.  At  a  meeting  in  Munich,  the  Old  Catho- 
lics claimed  the  Primitive  Church  for  their  guidance, 
and  accepted  the  decrees  of  the  Council  of  Trent, 
against  which,  they  maintained,  the  Pope  had  been 
for  a  long  time  working  ;  but  at  a  second  meeting, 
at  Solothurn,  a  proposal  that  "  they  should  at  once 
secede  from  the  Church  of  Rome,"  was  defeated  by 
a  large  majority. 

In  1872,  a  meeting  of  the  "Old  Catholics"  was  held 
at  Cologne,  at  which  the  Bishops  of  Ely  (Dr.  Harold 
Browne)  and  Lincoln,  and  the  Dean  of  Westminster, 
were  present,  and  a  committee  was  appointed  for  the 
purpose  of  promoting  the  re-union  of  Christendom. 

In  1874,  Dr.  Dollinger  invited  members  of  the  East- 
ern, English,  and  American  Churches,  for  conference 
at  Bonn.  "  The  discussions  will  be  conducted,"  he 
said,  "  on  the  basis  of  what  was  taught  and  believed 
in  the  ancient  Church  ;  and  the  common  ground  and 
authoritative  guides  will  be  sought  in  the  doctrines 
and  institutions  of  Christianity,  both  Eastern  and 
Western,  and  in  the  formularies  of  faith  as  they  ex- 
isted before  the  great  disruption  which  separated  the 

s  s 


626 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


Eastern  Church  from  her  Western  sister,  and  broke 
up  the  union  of  Christendom."  At  this  conference, 
the  main  difficulty  was  the  "  Filioque  "  clause  in  the 
Nicene  Creed,  with  regard  to  which  the  Easterns  were 
inflexible. 

Another  meeting  was,  however,  arranged,  and  took 
place  on  August  12,  1875.  t^'^^t  meeting  Lycur- 

gos.  Archbishop  of  Syra  and  Tenos,  attended.  The 
archbishop,  in  1870,  had  spent  three  months  in  Eng- 
land, where  he  had  been  received  by  the  Queen,  Mr. 
Gladstone,  the  Archbishop  of  York,  the  Bishops  of 
London,  Winchester,  Ely,  and  Lincoln ;  he  had  been 
made  a  D.C.L.  at  Cambridge,  a  D.D.  at  Oxford,  and 
had  left  England  favourably  disposed  ^  towards  its 
Church,  and  desirous  of  re-union  with  it.  Although 
in  feeble  health,  he  attended  this  second  meeting 
mainly  at  the  request  of  Mr.  Gladstone.  He  was 
unanimously  elected  by  all  the  "  orthodox "  clergy 
present — Russians,  Greeks,  Slavonians,  and  Serbians 
— as  their  president,  and  is  generally  believed  to  have 
been  chiefly  instrumental  in  the  agreement  arrived  at 
between  the  Easterns  and  Westerns. 

On  August  14,  these  two  branches  of  the  Church 
arrived  at  an  agreement  to  the  following  effect  :  (i.) 
"  We  agree  in  accepting  the  CEcumenical  Creeds  and 
the  dogmatic  decisions  of  the  ancient  undivided 
Church."  (2.)  "  We  agree  in  admitting  that  the  ad- 
dition of  the  Filioque  was  not  made  in  a  canonical 
manner."  (3.)  "  We  adhere  on  all  sides  to  the  form 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  as  is  taught  by  the 
Fathers  of  the  undivided  Church."  (4).  "  We  reject 
every  notion  and  every  mode  of  expression  in  which, 
in  any  way,  the  acceptance  of  two  principles,  or  dpxf^t 
or  aiTiai,  in  the  Trinity,  would  be  involved." 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


627 


Thus  the  difficulty  about  the  Fih'oque  clause  was 
surmounted.  The  doubts  of  the  Eastern  Church  as 
to  Anglican  Orders,  Dr.  Dollinger,  who,  it  must  be  re- 
membered, is  one  of  the  most  learned  canonists  of  the 
day,  removed  in  the  following  words  :  "  The  fact  that 
Parker  was  consecrated  by  four  rightly -consecrated 
bishops  {rite  ct  legitime),  with  the  imposition  of  hands, 
and  the  necessary  words,  is  so  well  attested,  that  if  any 
one  chooses  to  doubt  the  fact,  one  could  with  the  same 
right  doubt  100,000  facts  ;  or,  as  was  done  in  jest  after 
the  appearance  of  the  life  of  Jesus  by  Strauss,  one 
could  represent  the  history  of  the  first  Napoleon  as 
a  myth.  The  fact  is  as  well  established  as  a  fact  can 
be  required  to  be.  Bossuet  has  acknowledged  the 
validity  of  Parker's  consecration,  and  no  critical  his- 
torian can  dispute  it.  The  orders  of  the  Roman  Chttrch 
conld  be  disputed  with  more  reasoji." 

That  these  conferences  held  out  hopes  for  the  re- 
union of  Christendom,  at  any  rate,  as  far  as  the  East- 
ern and  the  English  Churches  are  concerned,  there 
can  be  little  doubt.  The  Easterns  were  represented 
by  an  archbishop,  two  bishops,  two  archimandrites, 
and  eight  professors  of  theology  ;  the  Old  Catholics 
by  Dr.  Dollinger  (in  himself  a  host),  and  their  then 
only  bishop,  Bishop  Reinken,  who  was  consecrated 
by  a  bishop  of  the  Church  of  Utrecht ;  the  American 
Church  was  represented,  as  also  the  English,  not  by 
any  bishop  at  the  last  conferences,  but  by  leading  re- 
presentatives of  the  Church,  headed  by  Canon  Liddon. 

The  utilizing  the  capacious  naves  of  cathedrals  for 
divine  service  has  now  been  adopted  in  most  dioceses, 
and  has  been  attended  with  great  success.  It  com- 
menced in  1 85 1,  when,  in  order  to  meet  the  require- 
ments of  the  multitude  from  all  parts  of  the  world 

s  s  2 


628  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 

which  crowded  into  London  during  the  Great  Ex- 
hibition, the  naves  of  St.  Paul's  and  Westminster  Ab- 
bey were  thrown  open  for  divine  worship.  At  the 
close  of  the  Exhibition,  the  naves  of  the  cathedrals 
were  also  closed  for  service  till  1858,  when  they  were 
again  opened,  at  certain  times  of  the  year,  for  special 
evening  services  on  Sunday.  Since  1873,  ^^^Y  have 
remained  open  all  the  year ;  and  by  degrees  the  ex- 
ample set  by  the  metropolitan  cathedrals  has  been 
followed  in  almost  all  the  other  dioceses. 

In  its  course  of  progress,  it  was  scarcely  possible 
but  that  the  Church  should  encounter  some  difficulties 
and  dangers.  In  i860,  the  threadbare  subject  of 
Rationalism — the  same  which  had  been  so  prevalent 
in  England  in  the  eighteenth  century ;  in  France,  at 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth,  and  in  Germany  at  the  end 
of  that  and  the  beginning  of  the  present  century — was 
revived  in  England  by  the  appearance  of  a  volume 
entitled  "  Essays  and  Reviews."  The  book  consisted 
of  seven  essays,  all  but  one  written  by  influential 
clergymen,  who  talked  of  "  honest  doubt,"  and  of 
the  "  free  handling  in  a  becoming  spirit "  of  the  most 
sacred  truths  of  the  Bible.  It  was  the  same  story  as 
of  old,  gaining  importance  only  from  the  position  of 
the  writers ;  a  repugnance  to  creeds  and  formularies ; 
a  desire  of  comprehension  by  the  abandonment  of 
everything  that  is  Catholic  ;  the  acceptance  of  one 
part  of  the  Bible,  and  rejection  of  other  parts  ;  a  dis- 
like of  everything  supernatural,  and  an  appeal  to  the 
supremacy  of  Reason.  A  protest  against  the  book 
was  signed  by  between  eight  and  nine  thousand  of 
the  clergy  ;  it  was  condemned  by  the  Convocations  of 
Canterbury  and  York,  and  two  of  the  writers  were 
sentenced  in  the  Court  of  Arches  to  a  year's  suspen- 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


629 


sion,  a  judgment  which  was,  however,  reversed  by 
the  Privy  Council. 

A  still  more  pronounced  expression  of  Rationalistic 
principles  was  published  by  Dr.  Colenso,  Bishop  of 
Natal,  in  a  work  entitled  "  The  Pentateuch  and  the 
Book  of  Joshua  Critically  Examined,"  in  which  he  en- 
deavoured to  shew  that  those  books  were  full  of  er- 
rors, and  that  parts  of  them  were  "  unhistorical,"  or, 
in  other  words,  fabulous. 

In  1852,  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  was  the  only  An- 
glican bishop  in  South  Africa,  his  diocese  being  nearly 
3,000  miles  in  length.  It  was  therefore  resolved  that 
the  diocese  should  be  divided,  and  its  bishop  become 
a  metropolitan  of  a  province;  and,  in  1853,  the  sees 
of  Natal  and  Grahamstown  were  founded,  the  bishops 
appointed  to  those  sees  taking  the  oath  of  canonical 
obedience  to  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  as  metropolitan, 
and  to  the  Church  of  Capetown  as  a  metropolitical 
see.  In  June,  1859,  a  bishop  was  consecrated  for 
St.  Helena  ;  in  i860,  the  consecration  of  Archdeacon 
Mackenzie  raised  the  number  of  suffragan  bishops  of 
the  province  of  Capetown  to  four ;  on  his  death,  Dr. 
Tozer  succeeded  him  in  1863,  and  the  same  year  the 
first  bishop  was  consecrated  to  the  Orange  Free  State. 

A  great  outcry  was  raised  against  the  Bishop  of 
Natal's  book.  The  Bishop  of  Capetown  summoned 
his  suffragan  bishops,  two  only  of  whom,  the  Bishops 
of  Grahamstown  and  the  Orange  Free  State,  by  rea- 
son of  the  distance  and  the  difficulty  of  communica- 
tion, were  able  to  answer  the  summons.  With  these 
two  bishops  he  tried,  and  on  December  16,  1863, 
passed  sentence  of  deprivation  on.  Dr.  Colenso,  four 
months  being  allowed  for  retractation.  Every  other 
course  having  failed,  a  sentence  of  excommunication, 


630 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


bearing  date  December  16,  1865,  was  passed  against 
Dr.  Colenso,  and  formally  published  in  the  cathedral 
church  of  Pieter-Maritzburg.  The  sentence  was  after- 
wards approved  by  the  Convocations  of  Canterbury 
and  York,  by  the  Episcopal  Synod  of  Scotland,  by 
the  Provincial  Council  of  Canada,  and  by  a  large  ma- 
jority of  bishops  assembled  at  the  first  Lambeth  Con- 
ference in  1867.  Dr.  Colenso  had,  however,  appealed 
to  the  Privy  Council  against  the  sentence,  and  in  1865 
it  was  reversed,  and  the  trial  at  the  Cape  was  pro- 
nounced to  be  null  and  void  ;  whilst  by  a  subsequent 
judgment  in  his  favour,  given  in  1866  by  Lord  Romilly, 
Master  of  the  Rolls,  Dr.  Colenso  was  enabled  to  com- 
pel the  Colonial  Bishoprics  Fund  to  continue  his  salary. 
Other  funds,  however,  were  provided  for  the  mainte- 
nance of  a  new  bishop,  and  Mr.  Macrorie  was  chosen, 
with  the  concurrence  of  the  Primate,  by  the  Bishops 
of  Capetown  and  Grahamstown,  as  Bishop  of  Pieter- 
Maritzburg. 

Such  matters  were  of  course  trials  ;  but  they  did 
not  hinder  the  progress  of  the  Church.  In  1876,  two 
new  bishoprics,  those  of  St.Alban's  and  Truro,  were 
founded,  and  thus  far  the  Church  had  added,  since  the 
time  of  Henry  VIII.,  four  to  the  roll  of  home-bishop- 
rics;  in  1878  was  passed  the  "Additional  Bishoprics' 
Bill,"  through  which  the  see  of  Liverpool  has  already 
come  into  existence,  whilst  those  of  Newcastle-on- 
Tyne,  Southwell,  and  Wakefield,  are  promised  in 
course  of  time. 

The  progress  of  the  Church  in  the  matter  of  educa- 
tion has  been  eminently  satisfactory.  Notwithstanding 
the  Education  Act,  and  the  rate-paid  school-boards, 
its  work  in  primary  education  has  immensely  advanced. 
Since  the  passing  of  that  act,  the  accommodation  sup- 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


631 


plied  in  Church-schools  increased  from  1,365,080  on 
August  31,  1870,  to  2,301,073  on  August  31,  1879 
(i.e.  935,993  additional  school -places  were  provided 
by  the  Church) ;  whilst,  during  the  same  period,  all  the 
other  religioits  bodies,  together  with  school-boards,  pro- 
vided accommodation  for  only  1,327,647  children  ;  and 
this  is  all  the  more  wonderful  when  we  remember  the 
reckless  expenses  incurred  by  the  school-boards,  and 
the  advantages  possessed  by  them  in  having  at  their 
command  the  money  of  the  ratepayers.  It  appears 
also  that,  during  the  ten  years  ending  August  31,  1879, 
the  Church  contributed  towards  education  in  church- 
schools  :  (i.)  For  the  maintenance  of  the  schools, 
;^4,94i,689;  (2.)  For  building  and  enlarging  schools, 
294,307  ;  the  total  amount  being  ^6,235,996,  as 
against  contributions  of  ^1,490,892  from  all  the  other 
religious  bodies  in  England  ^. 

If  we  bear  in  mind  that,  since  its  formation,  the 
National  Society  alone  has  dispensed  ^1,000,000  for 
educational  purposes,  involving  an  outlay  of  at  least 

1 2,000,000  more  in  actual  capital  from  other  sources, 
we  may  form  some  idea  of  what  the  Church  has  been 
doing  for  the  education  of  the  poor.  Through,  or  in 
connection  with,  the  National  Society,  the  Church  has 
founded  six-and-twenty  Training  Colleges  for  Teach- 
ers, St.  Mark's  College  alone  costing  from  ;^6o,ooo 
to  ^70,000;  Culham  nearly  ^20,000  ;  and  others  in 
proportion 

The  spread  of  sound  religious  education  amongst 
the  middle,  and  more  especially  the  lower  middle, 
classes,  that  portion  of  the  community  which  is  gene- 
rally supposed  to  be  the  mainstay  of  Nonconformity, 
and  the  success  of  Canon  Woodard's  gigantic  scheme 

«  Leaflet  published  by  the  National  Society  (May,  1880). 
Quarterly  Review,  July,  1874. 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


in  supplying  those  classes  witri  the  advantages  of 
a  public-school  education,  based  upon  Church  prin- 
ciples, promises  the  happiest  results  for  the  Church. 
At  the  head  of  these  establishments  stands  Lancing 
College,  which,  however,  by  the  original  intention  of 
its  founder,  holds  a  higher  position,  similar  to  that 
of  Radley  and  Bradfield,  and  ranks,  though  at  a  much 
lower  cost,  amongst  our  great  public  schools.  Others 
are  St.  John's,  Hustpierpoint ;  Denstone,  and  Taunton  ; 
also  Ardingly,  built  to  accommodate  i.ooo  boys,  and 
Ellesmere,  now  in  course  of  building ;  whilst,  in  alli- 
ance with  the  scheme,  are  two  schools  for  girls,  one  at 
Bognor,  the  other  at  Abbots'  Bromley. 

In  connexion  with  this  subject  must  be  mentioned 
the  Theological  Colleges,  which,  now  that  the  Uni- 
versities are  being  secularized,  are  of  the  first  im- 
portance to  the  Church;  St. David's  College,  Lam- 
peter, for  Wales,  founded  by  Bishop  Burgess  in  1822, 
and  incorporated  in  1828,  with  a  charter  granted  in 
1852  for  conferring  the  B.D.,  and  another  in  1864  the 
B.A.,  degree  ;  Queen's  College,  Birmingham,  incorpo- 
rated 1843;  St.  Aidan's,  Birkenhead,  founded  1846; 
St.  Bees,  Cumberland,  originally  founded  in  1816,  and 
recognized  by  Act  of  Parliament  in  1840;  Chichester, 
Cuddesdon,  Gloucester,  Highbury,  Ely,  the  Church 
Missionary  College  at  Islington,  Leeds,  Lichfield, 
Salisbury,  Truro,  and  Wells. 

]\Ianv  of  the  colonial  dioceses  have  also  theologfical 
colleges  for  the  training,  in  time,  of  their  own  clergy. 
But,  for  the  present,  the  colonial  and  missionary  clergy 
are  mostly  supplied  from  England,  for  which  purpose 
there  are  two  large  colleges,  St.  Augustine's,  Canter- 
bury, and  St.  Boniface's,  Warminster,  as  well  as  several 
smaller  ones.    The  Abbey  of  St.  Augustine '  had  been 

•  See  p.  67. 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


suppressed  in  1538  ;  but  in  1844  the  gateway  and  por- 
tions of  the  site  were  purchased  by  Mr.  Beresford 
Hope,  now  M.P.  for  Cambridge  University  ;  and  there, 
in  1848,  as  much  as  possible  of  the  original  struc- 
ture being  preserved,  St.  Augustine's  College  was  in- 
corporated for  the  training  of  missionary  clergymen. 

In  i860,  St.  Boniface's  College,  Warminster,  now 
affiliated  to  Durham  University,  was  founded  as  a  pre- 
paratory institution  to  St.  Augustine's  ;  but  since  1877 
it  has  held  an  independent  position,  the  number  of  its 
students  has  been  doubled,  and  it  now  occupies  in  the 
west  and  centre  a  position  similar  to  that  of  St.  Augus- 
tine's in  the  east  of  England. 

Besides  these  two,  are  the  Colleges  of  SS.  Peter  and 
Paul  at  Dorchester,  near  Oxford,  founded  in  1878; 
and  the  College  of  St.  Paul,  Burg-le-Marsh,  Lincoln- 
shire, opened  under  the  auspices  of  the  Bishop  of 
Lincoln  in  1877. 

Then,  again,  we  must  mention  King's  College, 
London,  almost  a  University  in  its  range  of  subjects 
and  staff  of  teachers,  incorporated  in  1829,  and  opened 
in  1831,  strictly  in  connexion  with  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land ;  the  University  of  Durham,  founded  in  1832 
through  the  munificence  of  Bishop  Van  Mildert  and 
the  chapter  of  Durham,  who  transferred  to  it  a  large 
income  from  their  own  revenues  ;  Keble  College, 
Oxford,  whose  name  alone  has  a  charm  for  every 
Churchman,  founded  in  1870,  with  a  guarantee  for 
its  religious  character,  of  which  every  other  college 
was  deprived  by  the  act  of  1871,  and  which  is  now 
one  of  the  four  largest  colleges  at  Oxford  ;  whilst, 
on  June  1  of  the  present  year,  was  laid,  in  commemo- 
ration of  the  late  Bishop  of  Lichfield,  the  foundation- 
stone  of  Selwyn  College  at  Cambridge,  which  is  in- 


634 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


tended  to  help  forward  the  mission  -  work  of  the 
Church  ^  and  which  it  is  hoped  will  prove  a  worthy 
rival  at  Cambridge  to  Keble  College  at  Oxford. 

At  Cambridge  also  has  been  established  a  Theo- 
logical Tripos,  and  at  Oxford  a  Theological  School, 
the  latter  for  the  purpose,  as  Dr.  Pusey  said  at  the 
time,  of  "  saving  Theology  from  being  crushed  out  by 
the  pressure  of  new  subjects."  It  has  not,  however, 
at  present  proved  a  success  ;  the  most  influential  tutors 
have  discouraged  it ;  few  honours  have  been  obtained 
in  it  ;  and  it  affords  no  measure  whatever  of  the  num- 
ber of  candidates  for  Holy  Orders'. 

At  the  commencement  of  this  chapter  we  charac- 
terized the  progress  of  the  Church  as  marvcllons.  In 
order  to  shew  that  this  is  not  an  exaorgrerated  state- 
ment  (perhaps  to  most  people  it  will  seem  a  truism), 
we  must  have  recourse  to  a  few  statistics. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  century,  the  number  of 
parishes  was  about  10,600,  and  the  number  of  clergy 
about  10,300;  in  other  words,  there  were  about  300 
more  parishes  than  there  were  clergy  to  serve  them  : 
out  of  this  number  of  clergy,  there  were  5,230  curates, 
4,224  of  whom  were  employed  by  non-resident  incum- 
bents. In  1802,  more  than  half  the  livings,  or  5,555, 
were  under  ^50  in  value,  many  were  as  low  as  ^30, 
and  in  4,800  there  was  no  habitable  parsonage.  The 
State  languidly  admitted  its  duty  of  providing  for  the 
spiritual  w^ants  of  its  rapidly -increasing  population  ; 
and  augmented  the  clerical  incomes  by  eleven  par- 
liamentary grants  of  ^100,000  each  between  1809 
and   1820,  whilst  between   18 18  and   1826  it  voted 

''  "  Ad  cultum  virtutis  ac  doctrinae,  ad  augmentum  fidei  Christianae  ad 
ethnicos  usque."    Words  spoken  by  the  High  Steward  of  the  University. 
'  Church  Quarterly,  April,  1881. 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


1, 650,000  towards  the  erection  of  new  churches. 
Since  that  time,  the  Church  has  been  left  to  its  own 
resources,  and  the  HberaHty  of  its  members. 

We  have  seen  that  in  1834,  that  is,  just  before  the 
report  of  the  Church  Enquiry  Commission  was  issued, 
out  of  the  total  number  of  livings,  one  half  were  under 
£220,  one  fourth  under  £120  a-year.  These  livings 
were  generally  held  in  plurality,  "  some  with  one  ser- 
vice v/eekly,  some  with  a  monthly  service,  some  with 
services  suspended  during  one  half,  and  only  occa- 
sionally performed  during  the  other  half,  of  the  year 

Now,  if  we  contrast  this  with  the  present  state  of 
things,  we  shall  be  able,  in  some  degree,  to  appreciate 
the  progress  which  has  been  made.  The  number  of 
parishes  and  parochial  districts  at  the  present  time  is 
about  13,300,  as  against  10,000  in  1 831",  the  number  of 
new  parishes  formed  under  the  Church  Building  and 
Ecclesiastical  Commission  down  to  November  i,  1880, 
being  returned  as  3,015.  The  number  of  new  churches 
built  since  the  commencement  of  the  century  to  1872 
was  3,204;  of  churches  wholly  rebuilt,  925;  in  all,  4,129: 
of  this  number,  1,150  were  built  in  the  ten  years  ending 
1872,  as  against  151  built  in  the  first  twenty  years  of 
the  century.  Restorations  and  enlargements  are  still 
more  numerous,  so  that  over  9,000  churches  have  been 
either  built,  rebuilt,  or  restored.  The  total  cost  of  this 
cannot  be  accurately  estimated ;  but  from  the  return 
presented  to  the  House  of  Lords,  on  the  motion  of 

"  Two  Letters  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  on  the  Origin  and 
Progress  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Commission  (1863). 

"  This  return,  which  was  made  in  answer  to  a  Parliamentary  enquiry, 
is  unquestionable,  although  it  is  smaller  than  the  return  made  at  the  com- 
mencement of  the  century.  The  discrepancy  is  probably  due  to  the  latter 
return  including  all  manner  of  chapels,  chapels-of-case,  school,  college, 
and  gaol  chapels.    (Quarterly  Review,  July,  1874.) 


636 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


Lord  Hampton  in  1875,  it  is  computed  that  not  less 
than  ^34,000,000  was  expended  on  church  building 
and  church  restoration  between  1840  and  1874,  an 
amount  which  has  since  been  increased  to  ^40,000,000 
at  the  least,  or  more  than  ^1,000,000  a-year°. 

During  the  last  fifty  years  also,  more  than  5,100 
new  parsonage-houses  have  been  built ;  thus  (not  to 
mention  parsonages  rebuilt)  there  is  a  clear  gain  of 
5,100  resident  incumbents. 

Next,  as  to  the  number  of  the  clergy.  In  1801,  the 
number  was  given  of  10,307  ;  in  1841,  there  were 
14,613  ;  in  1878,  over  23,000,  or  an  increase  of  8,000 
in  thirty-seven  years;  of  these  23,000,  19,000  were 
engaged  in  parochial  work,  of  whom,  in  round  num- 
bers, 13,000  were  incumbents,  and  6,000  curates  ^ 

The  last  Report  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Commission- 
ers affords  some  idea  as  to  how  the  money  has  been 
raised  which  these  great  enterprises  necessitated.  Four 
thousand  seven  hundred  benefices  have  been  aug- 
mented and  endowed  by  the  Commissioners  since 
1840;  grants  have  been  made  for  the  provision  or 
improvement  of  parsonages,  in  the  purchase  of  pro- 
perty, partly  of  land,  tithes,  &c.,  to  about  ^620,500 
per  annum  in  perpetuity,  amounting  in  capital  value 
to  about  ^18,615,000;  if  to  this  be  added  the  sum 
of  ^3,750,000  from  private  sources,  to  meet  the  grants 
of  the  Commissioners,  equivalent  to  an  increase  of 

"  Leaflet  published  by  the  Church  Defence  Institution. 

f  From  a  return  made  in  March  of  the  present  year  to  the  House  of 
Commons,  it  would  appear  that  at  the  end  of  1879  there  were  11,186 
resident,  1,509  non-resident,  incumbents  ;  387  curates  in  sole  charge,  and 
4,888  assistant  curates  ;  as  these  numbers  together  only  make  up  17,970, 
there  must  be  more  than  5,000  cathedral,  retired,  and  other  clergy  not 
computed. 

1  Twenty-third  Report,  for  1881. 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


25,000  per  annum,  we  shall  find  that,  through  the 
instrumentality  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Commissioners, 
in  forty  years  a  capital  sum  of  about  ^23,000,000, 
producing  an  income  of  ;!^765,500  per  annum,  has 
been  devoted  to  the  increase  of  the  value  of  benefices. 

The  revenues  of  the  Church  have  been  further  in- 
creased by  Queen  Anne's  Bounty.  Since  1831,  there 
has  been  committed  to  its  trusteeship,  by  charities  or 
private  benefactions  for  poor  benefices,  366,762 
in  money  and  bank  annuities,  valued  as  money ; 
;!^297,689  in  "  land,  houses,  or  tithes,  valued  as 
money;"  and  ^16,421  a-year  in  "land,  houses,  or 
tithes,  valued  in  annual  rent  or  in  yearly  rent-charges 
and  stipends."  If  the  last  sum  is  capitalized  at  twenty- 
five  years'  purchase,  it  will  be  found  that  the  endow- 
ments of  the  Church  by  private  liberality,  through  the 
instrumentality  of  Queen  Anne's  Bounty,  have  been 
increased  more  than  ^2,000,000.  During  the  years 
from  1864 — 1880,  the  amount  distributed  from  the 
funds  granted  by  Queen  Anne  were  ^285,600  ;  whilst, 
during  the  previous  thirty- five  years,  they  probably 
amounted  to  double  that  sum  ^ 

Other  public  sources  are  the  Tithe  Redemption 
Trust  of  1846,  and  the  increase  of  income  derived 
from  the  sale  of  the  smaller  livingrs  under  the  Lord 
Chancellor's  Augmentation  Act  of  1863,  by  which  last 
the  sum  of  ^242,679  has  been  added  to  the  capital 
endowment  of  churches. 

In  the  dioceses  of  London,  Winchester,  and  Roches- 
ter, separate  funds  have  been  raised  for  the  spiritual 
wants  of  those  dioceses.  The  first  of  these,  which 
was  commenced  in  1863,  had  at  the  end  of  ten  years 
expended  ^405,309,  whilst  it  drew  forth  three  times 

'  Quarterly  Review,  April,  1881. 


638 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


as  much  from  private  sources  ;  and  from  January  i, 
1874,  to  September  30,  1880,  its  receipts  have  been 

So  much  have  hvings  improved  in  value,  that  it  has 
been  found  difficult  to  dispose  of  many  which,  fifty 
years  ago,  were  of  an  average  value.  In  1863,  Lord 
Chancellor  Westbury  was  (by  the  Act  mentioned  above) 
empowered  to  sell  livings  in  the  Chancellor's  gift  of 
less  than  .^^^300  a-year  in  value  (the  schedule  of  the 
act  puts  the  number  of  these  at  327),  the  proceeds 
of  the  sale  being  devoted  to  the  augmentation  of  the 
livingrs. 

From  the  return  made  to  the  House  of  Commons 
in  March  of  this  year,  we  find  that  a  corresponding 
improvement  has  taken  place  in  the  income  of  curates, 
and  that,  whereas,  in  1 843  ^  the  average  stipend  paid 
to  a  curate  was  £^2  2s.  lod.  ;  in  1853,  £"/()  ;  in  1863, 
^97  los.  ;  in  1873,  ^129  5^-.  8^.  ;  in  1879,  it  had  risen 
to  ^150.  So  that  now  a  clergyman,  on  starting  in 
life,  is  secured  an  income  at  the  commencement  equal 
to  that  of  other  professions,  for  which  an  equally  ex- 
pensive education  is  required ;  in  fact,  we  may  go  fur- 
ther and  say,  that  many  doctors  and  lawyers  begin 
life  without  the  certainty  of  obtaining  so  large  an  in- 
come as  a  curate,  even  supposing  the  latter  never 
attains  to  any  preferment. 

Next  comes  the  question,  Where  does  this  money 
come  from  ?  If  we  place  the  number  of  curates  at 
6.000  and  their  stipend  at  ^150,  the  gross  curate- 
income  amounts  to  ^900,000,  about  half  of  which  is 
believed  to  be  paid  by  the  incumbents  ;  the  other  half 
must  therefore  come  from  lay  sources.  Of  the  socie- 
ties which  contribute  to  this  desirable  object,  there  are 

'  The  Church  and  her  Curates,  edited  by  the  Rev.  J.  J.  Halcombe. 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


three  principal  ones  :  of  these,  the  "Additional  Curates 
Society,"  which  confines  its  grants  to  no  particular 
party  in  the  Church,  with  an  income  of  ^^84,05 1  18.?.  ^d., 
made  grants  in  1879' to  the  amount  of  ^70, 135  \  2s.\\d.\ 
the  total  amount  of  its  grants  since  its  foundation  in 
1837  being  ^1,598,624  5^-.  dd.  Another  society,  the 
"Church  Pastoral  Aid,"  founded  in  1836  in  the  interest 
of  the  "  Evangelical  party,"  with  receipts  for  1879  of 
^57,114,  expended  ^54,824;  whilst  the  total  amount 
of  money  raised  since  its  foundation  is  ^1,173,943- 
A  third  source  of  income  to  the  curates  is  the  "Curates' 
Augmentation  Fund,"  the  object  of  which  is  briefly 
this, — "  to  give  to  the  working  curate,  while  at  work, 
an  augmentation  or  additional  stipend  of,  if  possible, 
;^ioo  per  annum,  over  and  above  the  stipend  which 
he  receives  from  other  sources.  ...  It  is  proposed,  in 
the  first  instance,  that  every  curate  of  fifteen  years 
standing  or  upwards,  being  in  the  bo7id  fide  receipt 
of  a  clerical  income  of  at  least  ^100  a-year,  or  ^80 
a-year  and  a  house,  shall  be  eligible  for  a  grant"." 
By  this  fund  grants  were  made  for  the  year  1879  to 
the  amount  of  £  \  1,683. 

The  efficiency  of  the  Church  has  been  greatly  pro- 
moted by  two  Acts  of  Parliament,  the  "  Bishops'  Re- 
signation Act"  of  1869,  and  the  "Benefices  Resigna- 
tion Act"  of  1870;  although,  it  must  be  confessed, 
a  much  larger  measure  has  been  meted  out  to  the 
bishops  than  to  the  incumbents.     By  the  former  of 

'  Since  the  above  was  written,  the  statement  of  the  accounts  of  this 
Society  for  1880  has  been  pubhshed,  from  which  it  appears  that  its 
income  last  year  was  only  ^^79,565  i6j.  <^d.,  or  a  decrease,  as  compared 
with  1879,  of  2s.  2d.    This  ought  not  to  be. 

The  Position  and  Prospects  of  Stipendiary  Curates  :  a  Paper  pub- 
lished by  order  of  the  Provincial  Council  of  the  Curates'  Augmentation 
Fund. 


640 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY, 


these  acts,  entitled  "  An  Act  for  the  reHef  of  Arch- 
bishops and  Bishops  when  incapacitated  by  infirmity," 
the  see  is  to  be  filled  up  as  if  the  bishop  were  dead, 
except  that  he  is  to  be  paid  whichever  is  larger  of  two 
sums,  one-third  of  the  emoluments  of  the  see,  or 
;^2,ooo  a-year ;  he  is  to  keep  the  episcopal  residences 
as  before,  and  his  rank,  style,  and  privileges,  except 
the  patronage.  In  the  case  of  the  see  of  Sodor  and 
Man,  the  retiring  bishop  is  to  receive  ;^i,ooo  a-year; 
whilst  of  the  two  archbishops,  York  is  to  receive 
£j,ooo  and  Canterbury  1,000  a-year.  In  a  word, 
the  retiring  bishop  retains  all  the  grandeur  of  a  peer, 
without  the  work  of  a  bishop. 

Far  different  is  the  case  of  the  incumbents  under 
the  "  Benefices  Resignation  Act."  An  incumbent  who 
is  incapacitated,  or  desirous  to  be  relieved  from  duty, 
is,  with  the  concurrence  of  the  bishop,  to  receive  a 
pension  not  exceeding  a  third  of  the  gross  income,  and 
to  vacate  the  parsonage-house. 

Some  important  advantages  have  resulted  from  the 
Ritual  Commission  of  1867  ;  one  from  the  third  re- 
port, in  consequence  of  which  an  improved  Lectionary 
has  been  adopted  ;  the  others,  the  result  of  the  fourth 
report.  With  respect  to  the  latter,  a  shortened  ser- 
vice in  parish  churches  in  lieu  of,  and  in  cathedrals 
in  addition  to,  the  ordinary  Morning  and  Evening 
Prayer,  is  allowed,  except  on  Sunday,  Christmas  Day, 
Ash  Wednesday,  Good  Friday,  and  Ascension  Day. 
The  following  portions  in  the  Prayer-Book,  at  the 
discretion  of  the  minister,  may  be  omitted  : — the  Ex- 
hortation, the  Vcnite,  one  or  more  Psalms  (one  at 
least,  or  one  portion  of  the  119th  Psalm,  being  re- 
tained) ;  one  Lesson,  except  a  Proper  Lesson  or  two 
Proper  Lessons  be  appointed,  when  that  Lesson  or 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


641 


both  Lessons  are  to  be  read ;  the  service  always  con- 
chiding  with  the  Prayer  of  St.  Chrysostom  and  2  Cor. 
xiii.  14. 

It  is  also  estabhshed,  if  that  were  necessary  (for 
there  is  no  authority  for  blending  the  services,  a  cus- 
tom which  is  attributed  to  Archbishop  Grindall),  that 
Morning  Prayer,  Litany,  and  the  Communion  Office 
may  be  used  as  separate  services  ;  and  that  the  ser- 
mon may  be  preached  without  any  Common  Prayer 
or  services,  so  long  as  it  is  preceded  by  the  Order  for 
Morning  and  Evening  Prayer  provided  by  the  act, 
or  by  the  Bidding  Prayer,  or  by  one  prayer  taken 
from  the  Prayer-Book. 

Two  circumstances  of  some  importance  remain  to 
be  mentioned.  On  May  17,  1881,  a  joint  Committee 
of  the  two  Houses  of  Convocation,  which  had  been 
appointed  on  May  5,  1870,  for  the  revision  of  the 
Authorized  Version  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  laid  their 
first  Report,  containing  the  proposed  revision  of  the 
New  Testament,  before  Convocation.  To  criticize 
the  Report,  so  soon  after  its  appearance,  would  ob- 
viously be  premature,  especially  since  the  book  at 
present  possesses  no  synodical  authority,  nor  is  Con- 
vocation in  any  way  responsible  for  it. 

The  other  circumstance  is  the  appointment,  in  com- 
pliance with  the  motion  carried  in  the  House  of  Lords 
by  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  of  a  Royal  Com- 
mission to  enquire  into  the  constitution  and  working 
of  the  Ecclesiastical  Courts,  The  Ecclesiastical  Courts' 
Commission,  which  held  its  first  meeting  in  the  Jeru- 
salem Chamber  on  May  30,  is  fairly  enough  consti- 
tuted, consisting  of  the  two  archbishops,  three  bishops, 
six  clergymen,  six  lawyers,  and  eight  others,  in  all 
twenty-five  persons ;  and  if  they  act  with  the  know- 

T  t 


642 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


ledge  and  prudence  which  ordinarily  distinguishes 
Englishmen,  the  Commission  may  effect  much  good ; 
but  the  Church  will  be  contented  with  nothing  short 
of  that  which  is  its  inalienable  right,  viz.,  to  be  allowed 
"  to  do  by  her  bishops  and  clergy  all  such  things  as 
.  .  .  shall  concern  the  settled  continuance  of  her  doc- 
trine and  discipline 

The  necessity  for  such  a  commission  brings  us  to 
the  consideration  of  an  objection  which  is  often  made 
by  opponents,  that  the  Church  is  a  house  divided 
against  itself.  Now  without  stopping  to  enquire  whe- 
ther there  are  not,  and  always  have  been,  equal  di- 
visions in  the  other  branches  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
we  readily  admit  that  there  are  amongst  the  clergy 
three  parties,  known  distinctively  as  the  High  Church, 
Low  Church,  and  Broad  Church,  as  to  the  relative 
strength  of  which  we  have  some  means  of  forming  an 
opinion.  When  an  agitation  was  set  on  foot  for  a  re- 
vision of  the  Prayer-Book,  a  protest  in  1862,  under 
the  auspices  of  Archbishop  Trench,  then  Dean  of 
Westminster,  was  signed  by  between  ten  and  eleven 
thousand  clergymen ;  these  clergymen  were  almost 
exclusively  of  the  High  Church  school ;  if,  therefore, 
we  make  allowance  for  those  who  did  not  sign,  and  the 
rapid  growth  of  the  party  since  that  time'',  we  may 
fairly  estimate  the  number  of  the  High  Church  party 
(or  of  those  who  would  deprecate  any  change  in  the 
dogma  or  discipline  of  the  Church)  at  12,000,  or  more 
than  half  of  the  clergy  of  England. 

Mr.  Scott- Robertson's  clerical  address  to  the  Bishops 

^  Preface  to  the  Thirty-nine  Articles. 

^  From  the  last  "  Church  Union  Gazette,"  it  appears  that  during  the 
twelve  months  preceding  its  publication,  as  many  as  2,619  members  (all 
necessarily  communicants)  were  added  to  the  English  Church  Union. 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


643 


in  1875,  against  the  eastward  position  and  vestments, 
received  5,376  signatures,  nearly  wholly  Evangelicals, 
with  a  few  names  from  other  schools ;  these,  taken  in 
conjunction  with  some  calculations  in  the  Record,  may 
be  considered  to  denote  the  full  strength  of  the  Low 
Church  party,  or  less  than  one-fourth  of  the  whole 
clergy. 

Then,  in  1872,  the  address  to  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  against  the  use  of  the  Athanasian  Creed, 
received  2,872  signatures,  mainly  of  Broad  Church, 
but  also  a  considerable  number  of  Low  Church  clergy ; 
we  may  therefore  estimate  the  Broad  Church  clergy 
at  about  2,500,  or  less  than  one-ninth  of  the  whole  ^. 

We  should  not  have  dwelt  upon  this  subject,  but 
that  we  believe  the  differences  in  the  Church  are  im- 
mensely exaggerated ;  that  they  are  mere  surface  dif- 
ferences ;  we  have  only  to  refer  to  the  Church  Con- 
gresses, which  shew  that  the  parties  can  meet  together 
and  amicably  discuss  their  divergences,  and  how  much 
wider  is  the  area  of  agreement  than  of  difference.  All 
agree  in  accepting  the  Prayer-Book,  the  High  Church- 
men may  prefer  that  of  1549,  the  Low  Churchmen 
that  of  1552  ;  both  prefer  to  leave  the  Prayer-Book 
as  it  is,  rather  than  run  the  inevitable  risk  of  legis- 
lative manipulation.  The  immense  meetings  in  St. 
James's  Hall  and  the  Hanover- square  Rooms,  on 
Jan.  31,  1873,  in  defence  of  the  Athanasian  Creed, 
shew  how  combined  are  all  Churchmen  (except  a  com- 
paratively insignificant  minority)  in  support  of  the 
Creeds ;  so  that  if  there  is  variety  in  non-essentials, 
there  is  unity  in  essentials ;  and,  after  all,  such  dif- 
ferences which  do  not  affect  our  unity,  are  an  indi- 
cation of  life,  and  far  better  than  torpor  and  indiffer- 

'  Church  Quarterly,  July,  1878. 
T  t  2 


644  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 

ence ;  most  people,  moreover,  are  agreed  that  it  would 
be  an  evil  day  if  one  or  the  other  of  the  parties  should 
be  cast  out,  or  retire  from  the  Mother  Church. 

Space  does  not  admit  of  our  particularizing  the 
numerous  agencies  which  of  late  years  have  sprung 
into  existence,  which  the  Church  employs  in  its  works 
of  mercy ;  such  as  are  Sisterhoods,  Guilds,  Confrater- 
nities, Penitentiaries,  Orphanages,  IMissions,  Retreats. 
We  will  conclude  our  remarks  on  the  Church's  pro- 
gress with  a  reference  to  the  last  edition  of  Mackeson's 
"  Guide  to  the  Churches  of  London  and  its  Suburbs," 
Avhich  gives  statistics  of  887  churches  in,  and  within 
a  radius  of  twelve  miles  of,  London,  and  may  be 
taken  as  a  fair  index  of  the  Church  Services  through- 
out the  land.  From  that  guide  we  find  that  there 
are  daily  celebrations  of  the  Holy  Communion  in 
43  churches,  or  one  in  twenty  ;  weekly  celebrations 
in  454,  more  than  half;  early  celebrations  in  533,  tAvo- 
fifths ;  choral  celebrations  in  128,  one-seventh;  daily 
service  in  256  churches,  nearer  one-third  than  one- 
fourth  ;  Saints'-day  services  in  433,  nearly  one-half; 
full  choral  service  in  303  churches,  more  than  one- 
third  ;  a  surpliced  choir  in  397,  more  than  two-fifths ; 
Gregorian  tones  in  124,  one-seventh;  a  weekly  offer- 
tory from  the  whole  congregation  in  440  churches, 
one-half ;  free  and  open  seats  in  317,  more  than  one- 
third ;  the  surplice  worn  in  the  pulpit  in  581,  two- 
thirds  ;  whilst  one  hundred  and  eleven  churches  are 
open  for  private  prayer  ;  in  53  the  Sunday  services  are 
separated,  and  in  91  the  shortened  services  are  said. 

As  to  the  more  distinctive  points  of  ritual :  the 
eastward  position  is  taken  by  the  celebrant  in  234 
churches  ;  vestments  are  worn  in  35  ;  incense  is  used 
in  11;  altar-lights  in  54,  and  in  addition  there  are 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


645 


candles  on  the  altar  during  Holy  Communion  in  53  ; 
floral  decorations  are  the  rule  in  219  churches  ;  and 
the  Dedication  festival  is  kept  in  1 56. 

Against  these  most  encouraging  statistics  must  be 
mentioned  two  rather  discouraging  items ;  the  one 
that  there  are  131  churches  in  which  there  are  no 
week-day  services,  and  267  in  which  there  is  evening 
communion  ;  but  against  the  former  must  be  placed 
an  increase  of  eleven  in  the  daily  services  ;  against  the 
latter,  of  45  in  weekly  celebrations,  and  55  in  early 
communions,  for  last  year. 


CHAPTER  V. 


CONCLUSION. 

"XTO  subject  is  discussed  more  freely  in  the  present 
day,  and  on  none  does  a  greater  diversity  of 
opinion,  even  amongst  Churchmen,  exist,  than  the 
Disestabhshment  of  the  Church  ;  for,  whilst  some  re- 
gard the  union  between  Church  and  State  as  a  mutual 
advantage,  others  regard  it  as  a  cause  of  weakness  to 
the  Church.  Thirty-seven  years  ago,  that  union  was 
believed  to  be  the  essential  principle  of  the  British 
Constitution ;  but  of  late,  active  measures  have  been 
adopted  for  disestablishment  and  also  disendowment. 
The  "  Liberation  Society,"  with  an  average  income  of 
^14,000  a-year,  has  constituted  itself  a  great  associa- 
tion for  that  purpose,  combining  Romanist  and  Pro- 
testant dissenters,  and  secularists  ;  it  has  mapped 
out  the  country  into  districts,  with  a  trained  and  sa- 
laried agent  in  each ;  vigorous  measures  are  being 
made  to  extend  the  movement  on  all  sides  by  means 
of  lectures,  public  meetings,  school-room  addresses, 
and  the  diligent  circulation  of  millions  of  anti-Church 
pamphlets  and  leaflets,  by  an  army  of  voluntary 
tract  distributors.  In  1879,  the  Society  circulated  no 
less  than  3,141,767  publications,  and  delivered  794 
lectures;  whilst  from  1875  to  1879  inclusive,  these 
lectures  amounted  to  4,281.  Local  newspapers  are 
diligently  worked,  local  influences  unsparingly  invoked 
to  excite  opposition  to  the  Church,  and  to  return 
a  Parliament  favourable  to  the  views  of  the  Libera- 
tionists 

'  Memorandum  for  Church  Defence  Conference  at  Lambeth  Palace, 
March  28,  1 88 1. 


CONCLUSION. 


647 


That  the  disestablishment  of  the  Church,  the  abo- 
lition, that  is,  of  the  oldest  institution  in  the  land,  must 
be  a  serious  venture,  and  a  leap  in  the  dark,"  there 
can  be  no  doubt,  if  only  for  the  reason  that  there 
is  no  equivalent  precedent  by  which  to  measure  its 
importance  ;  no  means  of  judging  how  much  of  the  su- 
perstructure may  fall  with  the  destruction  of  the  founda- 
tion, coeval  with  the  earliest  history  of  the  nation. 

"The  Church  of  England,"  says  Dr.  Dollinger^  "  has 
not  only  been  a  part  of  the  history  of  this  country,  but 
a  part  so  vital,  entering  so  profoundly  into  the  entire 
life  and  action  of  the  country,  that  the  severing  of  the 
two  would  leave  nothing  behind  but  a  bleeding  and 
lacerated  mass.  Take  the  Church  of  England  out  of 
the  history  of  England,  and  the  history  of  England 
becomes  a  chaos,  without  order,  without  life,  and 
without  meaning." 

On  May  9,  1871,  the  House  of  Commons  rejected 
a  resolution  for  Disestablishment,  brought  forward  by 
the  late  Mr,  Miall,  by  374  to  89  votes  ;  and  on  July  2, 
1873,  his  motion  for  a  Royal  Commission  to  enquire 
into  the  revenues,  &c.,  of  the  Church,  by  295  to  94 
votes.  Still  Dissenters  seem  to  have  their  way  in  all 
things ;  and  they  will  never  be  contented  till  they 
have  their  way  in  this.  Already  Church-rates  have 
been  abolished;  Church  teaching  in  the  elementary 
schools  has  been  restrained  ;  the  endowed  schools  and 
the  Universities,  to  a  great  degree,  have  been  secu- 
larized; the  parochial  graveyards  opened  to  the  ser- 
vices of  the  Nonconformists. 

In  every  British  colony,  the  Established  Church  has 
been  swept  away ;  the  Irish  Church  has  been  dises- 
tablished and  disendowed.  It  is  true,  the  case  be- 
Lectures  on  the  Reunion  of  the  Churches. 


648  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


tween  the  Irish  Church  and  the  Church  of  England 
is  widely  dissimilar.  The  disestablishment  of  the 
former  was  decreed  on  the  plea  that  the  Roman 
Catholics  had  increased,  and  the  Established  Church 
decreased,  to  such  an  extent,  as  to  render  the  applica- 
tion to  the  latter  of  emoluments  which  of  late  years 
had  largely  increased,  an  unendurable  injustice.  Long 
since,  the  Irish  Church  had  been  described  as  "bishops 
without  clergy,  churches  without  parsons,  and  parsons 
without  churches and  things  grew  worse  instead 
of  better. 

If  the  idea  of  an  Established  Church  consists  in 
the  combination  of  efficiency  and  religious  liberty, 
that  the  Church  of  England  in  the  present  day  has 
attained  :  never  was  the  Church  more  efficient,  more 
thoroughly  Catholic,  than  at  present ;  never  was  it 
more  liberal  ;  and  Dissenters,  with  regard  to  the 
Church,  have,  in  some  respects,  been  placed  in  a 
better  position  than  Churchmen;  for,  whereas  the  latter 
have  to  pay,  the  Dissenters  have  established  their 
rights  to  the  Church  without  payment. 

The  hostility  of  Dissenters  to  an  Established  Church 
is  a  characteristic  feature  of  the  Nonconformists  of  the 
present  day,  unlike  that  of  their  predecessors,  who, 
although  they  themselves  left  the  Church  in  search 
of  a  more  earnest  type  of  religion,  yet  often  speak 
of  the  Established  Church  as  essential  to  the  well-being^ 
of  the  nation.  The  works  of  Baxter  and  Owen,  Howe 
and  Henry,  Watts  and  Doddridge,  and  other  leading 
Nonconformists,  abound  in  sentiments  of  good-will  to 
the  principle  of  an  Established  Church.  And  it  is 
strange  that  their  successors  should  have  discovered 
objections  in  the  present  day,  just  when  the  old  land- 
"  Lord  Wellesley  in  181 2. 


CONCLUSION. 


649 


marks  between  Church  and  Dissent  have  disappeared  ; 
when  the  advocates  of  the  latter  have  not  only  dis- 
carded the  prejudices  of  their  ancestors,  but  have 
adopted  forms  and  ceremonies  which,  not  many  years 
ago,  would  have  been  branded  as  highly  ritualistic ; 
when  their  places  of  worship  are  no  longer  designated 
meeting-houses,  but  chapels  and  even  churches  ;  when 
you  no  longer  see  the  red  brick  Ebenezers  and  Bethels 
of  former  times,  but  a  style  of  architecture  which 
throws  into  the  shade  the  churches  of  the  eighteenth 
and  early  nineteenth  centuries  ;  when  they  freely  adopt 
parts  of  the  Church's  Prayer-Book  in  their  services; 
when  they  use  surplices  and  organs  ;  when  their  min- 
isters are  frequently  seeking  admission  within  the 
Church ;  it  is  strange  that  at  such  a  time  they  should 
have  discovered  conscientious  scruples,  and  that  Ro- 
manist and  Protestant  dissenters,  who  love  each  other 
no  better  than  they  love  the  Church,  should  have 
entered  into  an  alliance  with  secularists  and  others, 
who  demand  a  free-trade  in  religion,  and  would  destroy 
every  vestige  of  a  Christian  Church. 

That  the  fulfilment  of  the  wishes  of  those  who  ad- 
vocate disestablishment  would  be  a  cause  of  weakness 
to  the  Church  we  do  not  for  a  moment  believe  ;  how 
it  would  affect  the  State  is  a  different  question  :  the 
subject  is,  on  many  grounds,  of  too  great  imjDortance 
to  be  lightly  dismissed,  and  must  occupy  a  space  in 
our  concludingr  remarks. 

What  does  Establishment  imply  ?  To  answer  this, 
we  will  not  have  recourse  to  those  who  are  biassed  in 
favour  of  the  Church,  but  to  one  who  was  known  as 
the  "  advocate  of  the  rights  of  the  people,"  the  un- 
sparing castigator  of  the  abuses  of  the  Church,  Wil- 
liam Cobbett :   "  An  Established  Church,"  he  says, 


650  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 

"a  Church  established  upon  Christian  principles,  is  this 
— that  it  provides  an  edifice  sufficiently  spacious  for 
the  assembling  of  the  people  in  every  parish ;  that  it 
provides  a  spot  for  the  interment  of  the  dead ;  that  it 
provides  a  priest,  or  teacher  of  religion,  to  officiate 
in  the  edifice,  to  go  to  the  houses  of  the  inhabitants, 
to  administer  comfort  to  the  distressed,  to  counsel  the 
wayward,  to  teach  the  children  their  duty  towards  God, 
their  parents,  and  their  country ;  to  perform  the  duties 
of  marrying,  baptizing,  and  burying ;  and  particularly 
to  initiate  children  in  the  first  principles  of  religion 
and  morality,  and  to  cause  them  to  communicate ;  that 
is  to  say,  by  an  outward  act  of  theirs  to  become  mem- 
bers of  the  spiritual  Church  of  Christ ;  all  which  things 
are  to  be  provided  for  by  those  who  are  the  pro- 
prietors of  the  houses  and  lands  of  the  parish ;  and 
when  so  provided,  are  to  be  deemed  the  property 
or  uses  belonging  to  the  poorest  man  of  the  parish, 
as  well  as  the  richest." 

He  puts  to  himself,  and  answers,  the  question, 
"  Ought  we  to  have  an  Establishment  at  all  ?  In 
answering  which  for  ourselves,  it  is  our  opinion  that 
this  nation  has  been  much  more  religious  and  happy 
tinder  the  influence  of  the  Protestant  Established  Church 
than  it  is  ever  likely  to  be  in  case  that  Church  were 
abolished^." 

The  opinion  of  a  man  brought  up  as  Cobbett  was 
at  the  plough-tail,  who,  by  his  perseverance  and 
energy,  raised  himself  in  life,  whose  predilections 
were  rarely  in  favour  of  the  Church,  is  important. 
The  great  advantage  of  an  established  Church  is  to 
the  poor.  "  If  I  would  keep  up  the  Established 
Church  of  England,"  says  Lord  Macaulay,  "  it  is  not 

Political  Register, 


CONCLUSION, 


for  the  sake  of  lords  and  baronets,  and  country  gentle- 
men of  ^5,000  a-year,  and  rich  bankers  in  the  city. 
.  .  .  The  person  about  whom  I  am  uneasy  is  the 
working-man,  the  man  who  would  find  it  difficult  to 
pay  even  five  shillings  or  ten  shillings  a-year  out  of  his 
small  earnings  for  the  ministration  of  religion.  What 
is  to  become  of  him  under  the  voluntary  system  ?" 

Wherever  a  parish  church  stands,  there  is  the  centre 
of  the  religious,  intellectual,  and  social  life  of  the  pa- 
rish, where  the  rich  find  a  friend,  the  poor  sympathy, 
and  where  even  now  the  children  of  the  poor  receive 
instruction  ;  where  Churchmen  and  Dissenters  are 
alike  parishioners ;  —  what  would  the  Liberationists 
substitute  for  such  a  principle  ?  on  whom,  under  the 
voluntary  system,  would  rest  the  responsibility  ?  what 
certainty  would  there  be  that  the  poor  were  cared  for, 
the  fabric  of  the  church  maintained,  its  services  de- 
voutly conducted,  the  eccentricities  of  the  preacher 
controlled  ? 

But  with  disestablishment  there  is  a  cry  for  disendow- 
ment  also.  We  have  before  dwelt  on  the  rights  of 
the  Church  to  its  property ;  of  late  years  only,  now 
that  Church  endowments  have  become  so  large  as 
to  be  on  a  national  scale  of  magnitude,  has  the  State 
thought  them  deserving  of  attention,  or  statesmen 
spoken  of  them  as  national  property.  At  first,  the 
Liberationists  "  demanded  only  the  sequestration  of 
property  granted  by  Parliament  to  the  Church ;  in 
four  years'  time  they  demanded  all  national  property 
devoted  to  the  maintenance  of  religion  "  Vires 
acquirit  eundo." 

Now,  we  find  that  the  gross  yearly  value  of  the 
endowments  of  the  Church  is  rather  over  ^^4,000,000. 

*  London  Quarterly  Review,  April,  1863. 


652 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAV. 


Of  this  sum,  tithes  and  rents  given  to  the  Church  of 
Eneland  before  the  Reformation  amount  to  about 
950,000;  since  the  Reformation  to  ^2,250,000; 
in  all,  a  gross  yearly  amount  of  ;^4,20o,ooo;  or,  if 
we  deduct  ^700,000  paid  to  the  State  as  taxes,  &c., 
other  than  income-tax,  a  net  yearly  value  of  about 
^3,500,000. 

This  net  value  is  thus  distributed  : — to  archbishops, 
bishops,  and  archdeacons,  about  ^173,000;  to  the 
deans,  132  canons,  128  minor  canons,  singers,  and  lay 
officers,  about  ^203,000 ;  to  rectors,  vicars,  and  cu- 
rates, about  ;^3, 1 24,000.  To  supplement  its  endow- 
ments, the  Church  receives  by  free  gifts  from  its  mem- 
bers towards  the  support  of  schools,  missions,  the 
expenses  of  divine  worship  and  fabric  of  the  churches, 
the  poor,  and  such-like,  about  _;^5, 500,000  every  year  ^ 

So  that  the  Church  is  not  so  rich,  certainly  not 
comparatively  so  rich',  as  people  suppose.  If  "the 
whole  revenue  of  the  Church,"  says  the  "Times"  news- 
paper ^  "  glebes,  rent-charges,  parsonages,  churches, 
episcopal  and  capitular  incomes,  were  brought  to  the 
hammer,  they  would  not  fetch  the  amount  of  last 
year's  moderate  '  drink  bill.' "  Now,  last  year's  bill 
(as  it  is  called)  amounted  to  12  8,000,000,  that  is, 
an  average  of  ^18  per  family,  abstainers  included  ; 
and  yet  this  enormous  sum  was  moderate  as  compared 
with  that  of  1876,  which  amounted  to  ^147,288,760. 
Would  it  be  wise  policy,  with  such  a  national  vice 

'  Leaflet  of  Church  Defence  Institution. 

B  There  are  probably  at  least  ten  lay  peers,  each  of  whom  has  a  yearly 
income  equal  to  that  of  all  the  archbishops,  bishops,  and  archdeacons ; 
and  three  or  four  whose  incomes  not  only  equal  all  these,  but  the  incomes 
of  all  the  deans  and  chapters  in  addition  ;  whilst  the  aggregate  incomes 
of  fewer  than  twenty  equal  the  total  of  the  7iei  endowments  of  the 
Church.  March  29,  1881. 


CONCLUSION. 


Staring  us  in  the  face,  to  do  away  with  the  strongest 
barrier  that  exists  arainst  sin  ? 

But  if  the  Church  were  disendowed,  to  what  would 
the  money  be  appHed  ?  The  Liberation  Society  has 
pubHshed  its  proposals.  The  bishops  and  clergy  are 
to  be  pensioned  off;  the  parsonages  and  glebes,  after 
the  interests  of  the  clergy  in  them  are  paid  off,  are 
to  be  dealt  with  by  commissioners ;  all  cathedrals  and 
churches,  both  ancient  and  modern,  as  well  as  all  en- 
dowments, are  to  be  regarded  as  national  property, 
to  be  maintained  for  such  purposes  as  Parliament  may 
from  time  to  time  determine.  The  surplus  derived 
from  these  various  sources'is  to  be  appropriated  "  with 
reference  to  the  wants  and  feelings  of  the  period  ; "  it 
may  be  "  devoted  to  education,  to  the  maintenance  of 
the  poor,  to  effecting  great  sanitary  improvements,  to 
the  reduction  of  the  national  debt,  or  to  other  ob- 
jects beneficial  to  the  whole  nation." 

But  it  will  be  allowed  that  the  onus  rests  with  the 
State  of  shewing  that  the  property  of  the  Church  is 
national  property,  before  it  takes  upon  itself  to  con- 
fiscate it.  We  doubt  whether  the  right  of  the  Church 
to  its  own  property  can  be  more  clearly  shewn  than 
by  the  late  Mr.  Miall,  the  founder  and  mainspring  of 
the  Liberation  Society.  The  State  "  did  not  build 
these  churches.  It  did  not  endow  them.  It  does  not 
support  them.  It  has  simply  absorbed  them  into  the 
system  as  by  law  established.  All  the  benefice^ice  put 
forth  in  achieving  these  splendid  results — for  splendid 
they  are — ivere  put  forth  by  individtials,  not  Parlia- 
ment. .  .  .  The  beautiful  structures  reared  by  the  mu- 
nificent donations  of  the  wealthy,  both  in  the  metro- 
polis and  in  not  a  few  of  our  provincial  towns,  would 
probably  have  been  reared  all  the  same,  if  the  Church 


654 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


to  which  they  have  been  made  over  had  been  inde- 
pendent of  the  State."  Mr.  Miall  might  have  added 
that,  in  the  present  century,  the  Church  has  expended 
about  fifty  millions  of  money  in  restoring  the  churches 
from  the  miserable  condition  into  which  they  had 
fallen,  or  in  building  for  the  State  new  ones  for  the 
fifteen  millions  which  have  been  added  to  its  popula- 
tion ;  and  has,  through  the  voluntary  liberality  of  its 
members,  more  than  doubled  the  number  of  the  clergy 
provided  for  by  the  ancient  endowments.  What  could 
more  clearly  shew  the  right  of  the  Church  to  its  own 
property  ?  The  endowments  are  the  Church's  own  ; 
the  State  did  not  give,  it  only  protects  the  Church  in 
them.  Whether  it  was  an  Established  Church  or  not, 
they  would  have  been  given  all  the  same  ;  in  other 
words,  the  Church's  property  is  its  own,  to  be  used 
by  the  Church  as  the  "pillar  and  ground  of  the 
Faith';"  of  which  "  kinoes  are  the  nursino^-fathers  and 
queens  the  nursing-mothers  ^ ;"  to  which  has  been 
given  the  promise  that  "  no  weapon  formed  against 
her  shall  prosper^;"  and  to  the  members  of  which 
attaches  the  responsibility,  that  "  the  nation  and  king- 
dom which  will  not  serve  thee  shall  perish,"  and  "shall 
be  utterly  wasted  \" 

Disestablishment  will  probably  some  day  come,  and 
with  it  disendowment  may  come  also.  It  is  one  point 
gained  to  have  a  grievance,  even  if  it  is  an  imaginary 
one  ;  and  the  discordant  sects  of  Nonconformists  and 
Secularists  always  agree  in  agitating  until  their  cause 
is  gained,  and  the  State  is  always  ready  to  redress 
their  grievances.  It  is  as  well  to  be  prepared  for  the 
event.  But  should  it  come,  the  Church  has  surmounted 


'  I  Tim.  iii.  15. 

Ibid.  liv.  17. 


'  Isaiah  xlix.  23. 
'  Ibid.  Ix.  12. 


CONCLUSION. 


worse  difficulties,  and  may  look  forward  to  this  with 
calmness.  Certain  eventualities,  as,  e.g.  Parliament 
legislating  for  the  Church  without  the  sanction  of  Con- 
vocation ;  the  continuation  of  the  present  Court  of 
Final  Appeal,  and  of  that  court  over  which  Lord  Pen- 
zance presides,  in  ecclesiastical  causes  ;  the  unequal 
and  unjust  treatment  of  clergymen,  when  one  is  sus- 
pended for  a  year  for  intemperance,  whilst  another  is 
suspended  for  three  years,  perhaps  imprisoned,  or 
perhaps  deprived,  for  obeying  what  he  believes  to 
be  the  law  of  his  Church ;  such  provocation  might 
cause  the  value  of  establishment  to  be  set  at  too 
high  a  price. 

Meanwhile,  it  is  the  duty  of  the  Church  to  strengthen 
its  position,  and  to  devise  those  means  which  are  most 
conducive  to  the  spread  of  religious  truth.  And  how 
shall  it  best  do  this  ?  Two  means  at  once  suggest 
themselves.  The  first  duty  of  the  Church,  on  the 
principle  that  charity  begins  at  home,  is  towards  Non- 
conformists in  our  own  country.  There  is  enough  in- 
difference to  religion,  enough  worldliness,  enough  in- 
temperance, enough  infidelity,  to  which  they  as  well 
as  ourselves  are  opposed,  to  make  us  forget  our  dif- 
ferences, and  to  unite  our  forces  in  face  of  a  common 
danger.  Infidelity  in  various  forms  is  credibly  stated 
to  be  systematically  propagated  amongst  all  classes, 
especially  amongst  the  working  -  classes,  throughout 
the  country.  We  need  not  to  be  reminded  of  the 
danger  to  which  we  are  exposed  through  "  our  un- 
happy divisions,"  or  that  "  union  is  strength  "  and  di- 
vision weakness,  and  that  a  "  house  divided  against 
itself  cannot  stand."  Churchmen  are  too  inclined  to 
think  that  Nonconformists  are  entirely  in  the  wrong, 
and  are  irreconcileable  enemies.    We  believe  the  for- 


656 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  TRESEXT  DAY. 


mer  to  be  partly,  the  latter  to  be  wholly,  false.  There 
are,  it  must  be  allowed,  two  kinds  of  Nonconformists, 
political  and  religious  ;  it  is  with  the  latter  alone  that 
we  are  concerned  :  and  to  one  body  of  these,  the  great 
body  of  Wesleyan  Methodists,  who  reject  the  name 
of  Dissenters  altogether,  the  Church  owes  a  large  debt 
of  gratitude,  and  we  ought  to  regard  them  with  shame 
and  humility  rather  than  hostilit)'.  The  earlier  move- 
ment, which  clung  tenaciously  to  the  Church,  met  with 
nothing  but  opposition  from  the  Church,  whilst  its  fol- 
lowers drifted  into  schism  without  one  single  earnest 
effort  being  made  by  the  Church  to  restrain  them.  It 
was  the  Wesleyans,  we  must  remember,  who,  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  supplemented  the  deficiencies  of 
a  cold  and  sleepy  Establishment ;  who  provided  re- 
liorious  instruction  when  the  neglect  of  the  Church  left 
large  masses  of  the  population  entirely  uncared  for  ; 
if,  at  a  time  when  the  shepherd  slumbered,  the  sheep 
went  astray,  and  sought  refuge  in  a  more  congenial 
fold  ;  ought  we  not  rather  to  contrast  their  zeal  with 
our  neglect,  and  to  remember  with  gratitude  that  it  was 
they  who  provided  for  the  spiritual  \vants  of  Cornwall 
and  Wales,  and  for  a  large  part  of  the  manufacturing 
population  in  the  north  of  England  ?  As  we  were 
the  original  transgressors,  we  ought  to  look  upon  Xon- 
conformists  from  their  standpoint  rather  than  our  own  ; 
to  remember  that  dissent  has  now  become  hereditary 
amongst  them  ;  that  they  have  their  traditions  as  we 
have  ours  ;  and  that  they  regard  heresy  and  schism, 
and  other  points  which  at  present  divide  us,  in  an 
entirely  different  view  to  our  own. 

That  they  do  not,  as  a  whole,  regard  us  with  un- 
friendly feelings,  we  may  believe  from  the  number  of 
Nonconformists  who  return  to  us,  and  of  Noncon- 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


formlst  ministers  who  are  constantly  seeking  Holy 
Orders  in  the  Church.  The  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  not 
long  ago,  issued  a  Pastoral  to  the  Wesleyans,  founded 
upon  the  principles  of  the  Church  ;  it  was,  at  the 
time,  denounced  as  narrow  -  minded  and  repellent ; 
yet  what  has  been  the  result.-*  "Out  of  sixty-three 
students  who  have  entered  the  Theological  College, 
in  Lincoln,  with  a  view  to  Holy  Orders,  ten  have 
come  from  the  Nonconformists,  of  whom  seven  are 
W esleyans  ;  and  many  others  would  follow  their  ex- 
ample, if  they  were  not  prevented  by  difficulties  which 
arise,  not  in  foro  conscientice,  not  from  spiritual,  but 
from  social  and  financial  sources'"." 

It  is  evident  that  there  is  a  gravitation  of  dis- 
senters towards  the  Church,  which  it  is  the  duty  of 
the  Church  to  encourage.  How  is  this  to  be  done  ? 
Not  by  sacrificing  truth  to  peace  ;  not  by  level- 
ling ourselves  down  to  dissent,  but  by  levelling  up 
dissent  to  the  Church  ;  by  the  distinctive  teaching 
that  heresy  and  schism  are  sins  ;  that  there  are  three 
Creeds  to  be  accepted,  that  there  are  three  Orders 
of  the  ministry,  and  that  no  one  must  invade  these  un- 
less he  be  lawfully  called  and  sent ;  it  must  be  union 
on  the  principles  of  the  English  Church,  as  being  the 
principles  also  of  the  Primitive  Church.  If  the  Church 
shewed  a  conciliatory  spirit  towards  Nonconformists, 
is  it  too  much  to  hope  that  they  would  meet  us  in  a 
like  spirit ;  and  that  at  least  the  most  important  sec- 
tion of  them  may  yet  act  on  the  words  of  their  great 
founder  :  "  I  declare  once  more  that  I  die  a  member 
of  the  Church  of  England,  and  that  none  who  regard 
my  judgment  or  advice  will  ever  separate  from  it." 

And  when  we  have  effected  this  union,  there  is 

Paper  of  the  "  Home  Re-union  Society,"  1878. 
U  U 


658 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


another,  scarcely  second  to  it  in  importance,  for  the 
effecting  of  which  our  Church  has  pecuh'ar  advantage, 
the  reunion  of  the  divided  Churches  of  Christendom. 
"  More  has  been  done  in  England,"  says  Dr.  Bol- 
linger, in  his  Lectures  on  the  English  Church,  "  in 
the  last  nine  or  ten  years  to  bring  about  ...  a  union 
of  the  Eastern,  Western,  and  Anglican  Churches  than 
in  any  other  country,"  As  to  the  position  of  England 
with  regard  to  the  two  other  branches  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  we  will  quote  at  length  (for  they  are  of  great 
importance)  the  words  of  Le  Maistre,  who,  as  being 
one  of  the  straitest  sect,  and  the  most  able  advocate 
of  Ultramontane  opinions,  cannot  but  be  regarded  as 
an  unprejudiced  authority.  He  thus  writes  of  the 
Church  of  England: — "Si  jamais  les  Chretiens  se 
rapprochent,  comme  tout  les  y  invite,  il  semble  que 
la  motion  doit  partie  de  I'Eglise  d'Angleterre.  Le 
Presbyterianisme  fut  une  oeuvre  Frangaise,  et  par  con- 
sequent une  oeuvre  exaggeree.  Nous  somme  trop 
eloignes  des  sectateurs  d'un  culte  trop  peu  substantiel  ; 
il  n'y  a  pas  moyen  de  nous  entendre,  mais  I'Eglise 
Anglicane,  qui  nous  touche  d'une  main,  touche  de 
I'autre  ceux  qui  nous  ne  pouvons  toucher  ;  et  quoique 
sous  un  certain  point  de  vue,  elle  soit  en  butte  aux 
coups  des  deux  parties,  et  qu'elle  presente  le  spectacle 
un  peu  ridicule  d'un  revoke  qui  preche  l'ob6issance, 
cependant  elle  est  tres-precieuse  sous  d'autres  aspects, 
et  peut-etre  consideree  comme  un  de  ces  intermedes 
chemiques,  capable  de  rapproches  des  Elements  inasso  - 
ciables  de  leur  nature"." 

Great  strides,  as  we  have  seen,  have  already  been 
made  in  this  direction,  more  especially  in  connexion 
with  the  Greek  Church.    Since  the  promulgation  of 

"  ConsideratioJis  sur  la  France. 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


the  Vatican  decrees  the  prospect  of  reunion  with  Rome 
has  been  thrown  back,  we  cannot  tell  for  how  long ; 
the  conversions  which  have  taken  place  excited,  at 
one  time,  vain  hopes  for  the  reconversion  of  England  ; 
and  the  late  revival  in  the  English  Church  has  made 
Rome  more  bitter,  ever  since  it  has  been  manifest  that 
the  extreme  section  of  the  Ritualists  have  no  arriere 
pensee  for  its  community.  We  must  therefore  wait  in 
patience  and  abide  our  opportunity  ;  the  three  branches 
of  Christendom  have  much,  have  nearly  all,  in  com- 
mon ;  the  great  step  to  be  recognised  is  that  they  are 
one  Church,  because  they  acknowledge  one  Christ  as 
their  Head,  because  they  acknowledge  the  three  Creeds, 
and  the  first  four  General  Councils  as  their  standard  ; 
that  holding  thus  a  unity  of  Faith,  uniformity  in  prac- 
tice is  neither  expected  nor  desired. 

In  carrying  out  the  work  which  it  is  divinely  com- 
missioned to  perform,  all  the  Church  asks  from  the 
State  is  a  fair  field  and  no  favour,  and  the  same 
liberty  which  is  allowed  to  others,  of  managing  its 
own  affairs.  It  would  then  be  in  a  better  position 
than  it  is  now  to  perform  its  duties  towards  the  State, 
and  towards  those  members  of  the  community  who 
are  at  present  estranged  from  it. 

The  admission  of  Nonconformists  into  Parliament 
has  so  diminished  the  influence  of  the  Church,  that 
an  equipoise  can  only  be  effected  by  giving  the  Church 
the  same  freedom  as  is  allowed  to  members  of  other 
communities.  An  alteration  for  the  better  in  the  Ec- 
clesiastical Courts  will,  it  may  be  hoped,  result  from 
the  commission  recently  appointed  to  enquire  into 
their  constitution  and  working.  Some  change  in  the 
conge  d'elire,  which  will  allow  the  Church  a  voice  in 
the  selection  of  its  rulers,  may  reasonably  be  expected. 

u  u  2 


66o  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY. 


Power  to  alter  the  existinor  constitution  of  the  Lower 
House  of  Convocation,  so  that  there  may  be  a  large 
increase  in  the  representatives  of  the  parochial  clergy, 
is  essential  to  the  efficiency  of  the  Church.  At  pre- 
sent that  House  consists  of  156  members,  of  whom 
20  (the  English  deans  and  the  Provost  of  Eton)  are 
directly  appointed  by  the  Crown  ;  66  (the  Welsh  deans 
and  all  the  archdeacons,  except  the  Archdeacon  of 
Westminster)  are  appointed  by  the  Bishops ;  23  are 
Proctors  of  the  cathedral  chapters  ;  and  only  46  are 
the  representatives  of  the  parochial  clerg}',  who  of  late 
years  have  more  than  doubled  in  numbers,  and  whose 
importance  has  altogether  outgrown  the  proportion  of 
seats  allotted  to  them. 

The  Church  also  in  non-essentials  must  adapt  it- 
self to  the  wants  of  the  times  ;  it  requires  greater 
freedom,  greater  elasticity,  to  suit  the  various  elements 
which  make  up  our  national  character.  Celts,  Romans, 
Saxons,  Danes,  Normans ;  such  are  the  different  tribes 
which  have  tended  to  shape  our  institutions,  to  frame 
our  laws,  and  to  mould  our  character ;  and  the  aim 
of  a  national  Church  should  be  to  embrace  all  and 
exclude  none.  Some  people  like  a  plain  service,  others 
a  service  with  elaborate  music ;  the  surplice  contents 
some,  whilst  a  more  gorgeous  ritual  commends  itself 
to  other  congregations.  Short  services  are  required 
for  the  poor,  simple  services  for  the  unlearned  ;  a  rigid 
uniformity,  a  "  Chinese  exactness,"  as  the  late  Bishop 
of  Worcester  termed  it,  is  less  adapted  to  the  English, 
than  any  other,  nation. 

Never  was  the  Church  more  in  earnest,  never  more 
able  to  carry  out  its  divine  commission,  than  in  the 
present  day.  That  it  has  reached  an  important  crisis 
is  evident ;  but  its  past  histor)-  shews  that  its  fortunes 


CHURCH  PROGRESS. 


have  been  above  the  times  ;  it  has  been  appointed  to 
fulfil  a  great  purpose,  and  in  the  fulfilment  of  that  pur- 
pose it  is  the  duty  and  interest  of  the  State,  and  of 
those  outside  the  Church,  to  encourage  it.  "  If  Church- 
men and  Dissenters,"  said  the  late  Bishop  Wilber- 
force,  "  would  unite  together  to  exalt  the  one  name  of 
Christ,  and  for  the  love  of  that  name  seek  heartily 
and  thoroughly  for  brotherly  communion  in  one  com- 
mon Church,  England  might  have  it ;  and  having  it, 
she  might  be  the  first  in  things  spiritual,  and  then 
would,  in  things  material,  be  more  than  a  match  for 
a  divided  world  against  her." 


APPENDIX  A.  (p.  67.) 


THE  PALL. 

THE  Pall,  which  the  Greeks  called  Mfiocfiopiov,  and  the 
Latins  Pallium,  was  originally  a  part  of  the  imperial 
dress,  and  granted  by  the  emperors  to  the  patriarchs.  Thus 
Constantine  granted  it  to  the  Bishop  of  Rome,  and  Anthinius, 
Patriarch  of  Constantinople,  being  expelled  his  see,  returned 
the  Pall  to  the  Emperor  Justinian,  which  implies  that  he  had 
received  it  from  him.  (Broughton's  Bibliothcca.)  It  was 
afterwards  bestowed  by  the  Pope  on  Metropolitans  as  a  mark 
of  favour,  and  of  connexion  with  the  Roman  See,  the  earliest 
instance  of  such  a  grant  being  that  of  Caesarius,  Bishop  of 
Aries,  to  whom  Pope  Symmachus  permitted  "  speciali  privi- 
legio  Pallii  usum."  When  some  Metropolitans  received  it, 
others  applied  for  a  like  privilege,  so  that  in  time  it  came 
to  be  regarded  as  the  ensign  of  Metropolitan  dignity,  and 
that  dignity  the  gift  of  the  Pope.  Next  it  became  the  badge 
of  dependence  on  the  Pope ;  thus  Honorius  I.,  who  was  con- 
demned by  the  sixth  CEcumenical  Council  as  a  Monothelite 
heretic,  sent  one,  A.D.  634,  to  Paulinus,  Metropolitan  of  York  ; 
and  another  to  Honorius,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  as  a 
badge  of  investment  with  Metropolitan  power  derived  from 
the  Pope,  without  which  it  could  not  be  exercised.  The 
Council  of  Frankfort,  A.D.  742,  under  Pope  Zachary,  declared 
it  to  be  necessary ;  a  Metropolitan  could  not  be  consecrated 
without,  and  was  obliged  to  go  to  Rome  to  receive  it ;  in 
time  it  was  decreed  that  the  Metropolitan  should  be  buried 
in  his  Pall,  so  that  his  successor  might  not  be  able  to  use 
the  old  one,  but  be  obliged  to  apply  at  Rome  for  another. 
Thus  it  became  a  source  of  great  profit  to  the  Papacy,  so 
that  King  Cnut,  when  on  a  pilgrimage  to  Rome,  complained 
to  the  Pope  of  the  exorbitant  charges  made  on  English  arch- 
bishops, and  obtained  promise  of  relief ;  Matthew  Paris,  how- 
ever, states  that  in  the  time  of  Henry  I.,  the  Archbishop  of 
York  paid  a  sum  equivalent  to     10,000  for  the  Pall.  The 


664 


APPENDIX, 


badge  of  Metropolitan  submission  advanced  into  an  oath 
of  fealty  ;  by  the  Lateran  Council  of  12 15,  it  was  enacted  that 
neither  the  functions  nor  title  of  an  archbishop  should  be 
assumed  without  it,  and  as  subjects  swore  an  oath  of  alle- 
giance to  their  sovereign,  so  Metropolitans  should  swear  an 
oath  of  allegiance  to  the  Pope. 

Du  Pin,  himself  a  Roman  Catholic,  says :  "  Primum  qui- 
dem  Metropolitica  ordinationum  jura  ad  se  trahere  conati 
sunt  per  concessionem  Pallii  ;  eo  enim  dabatur  a  Pontifici- 
bus  ;  ut  possent  plena  auctoritate  sus  provinciae  Episcopos 
ordinare ;  unde  sequebatur  hanc  potestatem  a  Pontifice  Me- 
tropolitanis  simul  cum  pallio  concedi.  Hinc  postea  novo 
jure  Metropolitanis  interdictum  est  universis  functionibus 
episcopalibus,  donee  pallium  recepissent,  juramentum  que 
fidei  introductum  est."  {De  Antiq.  Ecc.  Disc)  This  oath, 
says  Archbishop  Bramhall,  was  at  first  innocent  enough, 
that  archbishops  should  observe  regulas  sanctorum  Pairum, 
but  was  soon  afterwards  exchanged  into  regalia  Sancti 
Petri,  i.e.  the  royalties  of  St.  Peter. 


APPENDIX  B.  (p.  560.) 

JERUSALEM  BISHOPRIC. 

Frederick  William,  who  succeeded  to  the  throne  of 
Prussia  in  1840,  conceived  the  idea  of  creating,  in  con- 
junction with  the  Church  of  England,  a  Bishopric  at  Jeru- 
salem, to  which  the  King  of  Prussia  and  Crown  of  England 
should  nominate  alternately ;  and  with  this  view  he  sent,  in 
1 84 1,  Chevalier  Bunsen  as  special  envoy  to  England;  the 
bishop  was  to  have  jurisdiction  over  the  English  and  Ger- 
man subjects  in  Syria  and  Palestine,  and  ordain,  if  occasion 
required,  natives  of  Germany,  who  should  subscribe  both 
the  Thirty-nine  Articles  and  the  Augsburg  Confession.  As 
there  was  already  a  bishop  of  the  Greek  Church  located 
there,  it  is  evident  that  there  could  not  canonically  be  an- 
other Bishop  of  Jerusalem.  The  intention  of  the  scheme 
may  be  judged  of  from  the  following  words,  taken  from  the 


APPENDIX. 


665 


statement  of  proceedings  afterwards  published  : — "  Whilst 
the  Church  of  Rome  is  continually,  and  at  this  very  moment, 
labouring  to  pervert  the  members  of  the  Eastern  Churches, 
and  to  bring  them  under  the  dominion  of  the  Pope,  sparing 
no  arts  nor  intrigues,  hesitating  at  no  misrepresentations, 
sowing  dissension  and  disorder  amongst  an  ill-informed  peo- 
ple, and  asserting  that  jurisdiction  over  them  which  the 
ancient  Churches  of  the  East  have  always  strenuously  re- 
sisted, the  two  great  Protestant  powers  of  Europe  will  have 
planted  a  Church  in  the  midst  of  them,  the  bishop  of  which 
is  specially  charged  not  to  encroach  upon  the  spiritual  rights 
and  liberties  of  those  Churches,  but  to  confine  himself  to  the 
care  of  those  over  whom  they  cannot  rightfully  claim  any 
jurisdiction,  and  to  maintain  with  them  a  friendly  intercourse 
of  good  offices,  assisting  them,  so  far  as  they  may  desire  such 
assistance,  in  the  work  of  Christian  education,  and  presenting 
to  their  observation,  but  not  forcing  upon  their  acceptance, 
the  pattern  of  a  Church  essentially  scriptural  in  doctrine  and 
apostolical  in  discipline."  Much  opposition  to  such  a  scheme, 
in  connexion  with  the  unepiscopal  Church  of  Prussia,  was 
raised  in  England  at  the  time ;  nevertheless,  before  the  end 
of  1841,  Dr.  Alexander,  a  converted  Jew,  was  consecrated  by 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  as  Bishop  of  Jerusalem ;  the 
scheme  has,  however,  failed  either  in  converting  the  Jews,  or 
in  conciliating  the  Oriental  Christians. 


SUCCESSION  OF  THE  ARCHBISHOPS  OF  CANTERBURY 
FROM  THE  APOSTLES. 


APPENDIX  C. 


St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul. 

1.  Linus,  A.D.  68. 

2.  Anacletus  or  CIetus,A.D.8o. 

3.  Clement,  A.D.  93. 

4.  Evaristus,  A.D.  100. 

5.  Alexander  I.,  A.D.  109. 

6.  Sixtus or XystusI.,.\.D.ii9. 


7.  Telesphorus,  A.D.  128. 

8.  Hyginus,  A.D.  139. 

9.  Pius  I.,  A.D.  142. 
ID.  Anicetus,  A.D.  157, 

1 1.  Soter,  A.D.  i68. 

12.  Eleutherius,  A.D.  176. 

13.  Victor,  A.D.  190. 


666 


APPENDIX. 


14.  Zephyrinus,  A.D.  201. 

15.  Calixtus,  A.D.  218, 

16.  Urban,  A.D.  223. 

17.  Pontianus,  A.D.  230. 

18.  Anterus,  A.D.  235. 

19.  Fabian,  A.D.  236. 

20.  Cornelius,  A.D.  251. 

21.  Lucius,  A.D.  252. 

22.  Stephen  I.,  A.D.  253. 

23.  Sixtus  or  Xystus  II.,  A.D. 

257. 

24.  Dionysius,  A.D.  259. 

25.  Felix  I.,  A.D.  270. 

26.  Eutychian,  A.D.  274. 

27.  Caius,  A.D.  283. 

28.  Marcellinus,  A.D.  296. 

29.  Marcellus,  A.D.  308. 

30.  Eusebius,  A.D.  310. 

31.  Melchiades,  A.D.  311. 

32.  Sylvester,  A.D.  314. 

33.  Mark,  A.D.  336. 

34.  Julius,  A.D.  337. 

35.  Liberius,  A.D.  352. 

36.  Felix  II.,  A.D.  355. 

37.  Damasus,  A.D.  366. 

38.  Siricius,  A.D.  384. 

39.  Anastasius  I.,  A.D.  398. 


40.  Innocent  I.,  A.D.  402. 

41.  Zosinius,  A.D.  417. 

42.  Boniface  I.,  A.D.  418. 

43.  Celestine  I.,  A.D.  422. 

44.  Sixtus  III.,  A.D.  432. 

45.  Leo  I.  the  Great,  A.D.  440. 

46.  Hilary,  A.D.  461. 

47.  Simplicius,  A.D.  468. 

48.  Felix  III.,  A.D.  483. 

49.  Gelasius,  A.D.  492. 

50.  Anastasius  II.,  A.D.  496. 

51.  Symmachus,  A.D.  498. 

52.  Hormisdas,  A.D.  5 14. 

53.  John  I.,  A.D.  523. 

54.  Felix  IV.,  A.D.  526. 

55.  Boniface  II.,  A.D.  530. 

56.  John  II.,  A.D.  532. 

57.  Agapetus,  A.D.  535. 

58.  Sylverius,  A.D.  537. 

59.  Vigilius,  A.D.  537. 

60.  Pelagius  I.,  A.D.  555. 

61.  John  III.,  A.D.  560. 

62.  Benedict  I.,  A.D.  574. 

63.  Pelagius  II.,  A.D.  578. 

64.  Gregory    I.    the  Great, 

A.D.  590. 


ARCHBISHOPS  OF  CANTERBURY 

1.  Augustine,  consecrated 

by  Vergilius  of  Aries, 
A.D.  597. 

2.  Lawrence. 

3.  Mellitus. 

4.  Justus. 

5.  Honorius. 

6.  Deusdedit. 
A  vacancy  of  four  years. 


7.  Theodore. 

8.  Brightwald. 

9.  Tatwine. 

10.  Nothelm. 

11.  Cuthbert. 

12.  Bregwin. 

13.  Lambert. 

14.  Ethelard. 

15.  Wulfred. 


APPENDIX. 


667 


16.  Theogild. 

17.  Ceolnoth. 

18.  Ethelred. 

19.  Phlegmund. 

20.  Athelm. 

21.  Wulfhelm. 

22.  Odo. 

23.  Dunstan. 

24.  Ethelgar. 

25.  Siricius. 

26.  Elfric. 

27.  Elphege. 

28.  Liring. 

29.  Ethelnoth, 

30.  Eadsige. 

31.  Robert  of  Jumieges. 

32.  Stigand. 

33.  Lanfranc. 

34.  Anselm. 

35.  Ralph  of  Escures. 

36.  William  of  Corboil. 

37.  Theobald. 

38.  Thomas  a  Becket. 

39.  Richard. 

40.  Baldwin. 

41.  Hubert. 

42.  Stephen  Langton. 

43.  Richard  Grant. 

44.  Edmund  Rich. 

45.  Boniface  of  Savoy. 

46.  Robert  Kilwardby. 

47.  John  Peckham. 

48.  Robert  Winchelsey. 

49.  Walter  Reynolds. 

50.  Simon  Mepeham. 

51.  John  Stratford. 

52.  Thomas  Bradwardine. 

53.  Simon  Islip. 


54.  Simon  Langham. 

55.  William  Whittlesey. 

56.  Simon  Sudbury. 

57.  William  Courtney. 

58.  Thomas  Arundel. 

59.  Henry  Chicheley. 

60.  John  Stafford. 

61.  John  Kemp. 

62.  Thomas  Bourchier. 

63.  John  Morton. 

64.  Henry  Dean. 

65.  William  Warham. 

66.  Thomas  Cranmer. 

67.  Reginald  Pole. 

68.  Matthew  Parker. 

69.  Edmund  Grindall. 

70.  John  Whitgift. 

71.  Richard  Bancroft. 

72.  George  Abbot. 

73.  William  Laud. 

74.  William  Juxon. 

75.  Gilbert  Sheldon. 

76.  William  Sancroft. 

77.  John  Tillotson. 

78.  Thomas  Tcnison. 

79.  William  Wake. 

80.  John  Potter. 

81.  Thomas  Herring. 

82.  Matthew  Hutton. 

83.  Thomas  Seeker. 

84.  Frederick  Cornwallis. 

85.  John  Moore. 

86.  Charles  Manners  Sutton. 

87.  William  Howley. 

88.  John  Bird  Sumner. 

89.  Charles  Thomas  Longley. 

90.  Archibald  Campbell  Tait. 


INDEX. 


Abbot,  Archbishop,  378,  379,  385, 

387,  388,  404. 
Act  of  Appeals,  592. 
Additional  Curates'  Society,  639. 
Adrian,  92. 

Advertisements  of  Queen  Elizabeth, 
354,  416;  not  "the  taking  further 
Order,"  355. 

yEtius  and  the  "  groans  of  the  British," 
38. 

Aidan,  St.,  78. 
A  Lasco,  323. 
Alban,  St.,  26. 

Albans,  St.,  27,  109 ;  bishopric  of, 
630. 

Albert,  Archbishop  of  York,  105. 
Alcuin,  100,  105. 
Alexander  II.,  Pope,  211. 

 III.,  Pope,  217. 

Aldrich,  Dean,  447. 
Alfred  the  Great,  113 — 117  ;  Laws  of, 
114. 

Alien  Priories,  127. 
Allegiance,  oath  of,  376. 
Alleluia  victory,  the,  36. 
Allen,  Dr.,  356. 
Anabaptists,  311  and  n.,  326. 
Analogy,  Butler's,  305. 
Andrewes,  Bishop,  370,  379,  386,  405, 
414. 

Annates,  224,  233,  282,  342. 
Anne  (of  Bohemia),  Queen,  259. 
Anne,  Queen,  452,  480 — 491 ;  Queen's 

Bounty,  470,  481. 
Anselm,  Archbishop,  144 — 155. 
Apiarius,  198. 

Appeals,  Court  of,  283  ;  Statute  of, 
282. 

Appellate  Jurisdiction  Act,  581. 
Aquinas,  St.  Thomas,  239  n.,  245. 
Arches,  Court  of,  581,  582. 
Architecture,  Norman,  128. 
Arimathsea,  St.  Joseph  of,  9,  18. 
Armagh,  see  of,  47. 
Arminian,  meaning  of,  379. 
Armorica,  56. 

Army  of  God  and  of  the  Church,  188. 
Arnold,  Dr. ,  552. 

Articles,  ten,  299  ;    forty-two,   326  ; 

thirty-nine,  352. 
Arundel,  Archbishop,  261,  263. 
Asaph,  St.,  57. 


Assize  sermon,  Keble's,  554. 
Association  of  Friends  of  the  Church, 
554- 

 Church,  582. 

Athanasius,  St.,  32. 
Atterburv,  Bishop,  450,  451,  473,  482, 
494- 

Augsburg  Confession,  306. 

Augustine,  St.,  lands  in  the  Isle  of 
Thanet,  64;  converts  King  Ethel- 
bert,  65  ;  consecrated  archbishop  of 
the  English,  66  ;  meets  the  British 
bishops,  68  ;  founds  the  see  of  Ro- 
chester, 71;  and  London,  ib.;  ill- 
success  of  his  mission,  ib.  ;  conse- 
crates Lawrence  as  his  successor,  72  ; 
college  of,  632. 

Augustine  Friars,  243, 

AuTo(fe<po\o(  churches,  193  n. 

Avignon,  Papal  residence  at,  224,  234, 
248. 

Bacon,  Roger,  239  n.,  245. 

Bale,  Council  of,  225. 

Bancroft,  Archbishop,  370,  375,  379. 

Bangor,  53,  54. 

 Iscoed,53;  slaughter  of  the  monks 

of,  70. 

Bangorian  Controversy,  492. 

Baptism,  lay,  371. 

Barbarossa,  214,  217,  2l8. 

Bari,  Council  of,  147. 

Barnabas,  St.,  Pimlico,  564. 

Bartholomew  (Black),  417.. 

Bath,  diocese  of,  141. 

Bathurst,  Bishop,  544. 

Baxter,  418,  432. 

Bee,  Abbey  of,  137,  144,  154. 

Becket,  St.  Thomas  a,  162 — 176. 

Bede,  i  n.,  104. 

Benefices  Resignation  Act,  639. 

Bennett  (Rev.  W.  J.  E.),  505,  585. 

Berenger,  140,  256. 

Berkeley,  Bishop,  459,  463  ;  "  Minute 
Philosopher  "  of,  505. 

Bernard,  St.,  214,  246. 

Berridge,  528. 

Bertgils,  Bishop,  84. 

Beveridge,  Bishop,  447. 

Bible,  translations  of.  Early,  257 ;  Wic- 
liffe's,  258  ;  forbidden  by  Archbishop 
Arundel,  259  ;  Tyndal's,  268 ;  Mat- 


6/0 


INDEX. 


tliew's,  301  ;  Great,  353  ;  Geneva, 
ib.  ;  Bishops',  ib.  ;  present  transla- 
tion, 375 ;  revised  edition  of  Nevif 
Testament,  641. 

Bidle,  John,  506. 

Birinus,  Bishop,  85. 

Biscop,  Benedict,  82,  92,  103. 

Bishops,  seven,  committed  to  the 
Tower,  436  ;  their  trial,  437  ;  their 
acquittal,  438 :  laxity  of,  in  early 
part  of  nineteenth  century,  545  ; 
Resignation  Act,  639 ;  suppression 
of  Irish,  552  ;  Book,  302. 

Blackburne,  Confessional  of,  510. 

Blois,  Henry  of.  Bishop,  158,  160. 

Blomfield,  Bishop,  541,  544,  563,  583, 
584  n.,  619,  621. 

Board-schools,  610,  611. 

Bohler,  Peter,  588. 

Boleyn,  Ann,  279. 

Bolingbroke,  501  ;  Dr.  Johnson's  opi- 
nion of,  502. 

Bonaventure,  Giffard,  435. 

Boniface,  St.  (see  Winfrid). 

■  III.,  Pope,  200,  273. 

 VIII.,  221 — 224. 

 of  Savoy,  Archbishop,  229,  234. 

Bonn,  meetings  of  Old  Catholics  at, 
625,  626;  agreement  at,  betw^een 
East  and  West,  626. 

Bonner,  B.,  316,  317;  character  of, 
330. 

"  Book  of  Sports,"  377,  390. 
Bosham,  monastery  of,  88. 
Both  kinds.  Communion  in,  317,  332. 
Bovmty,  Queen  Anne's,  637. 
Boyle  Lectures,  501  n. 
Bradwardine,  Archbishop,  253. 
Bramhall,  Archbishop,  272,  406. 
Bray,  Dr.,  448. 
Breda,  Declaration  from,  411. 
Bridgeman,  Lord  Chancellor,  421. 
Brightwald,  Archbishop,  100. 
Bristol,  see  of,  295. 

British  Church,  its  Apostolical  founda- 
tion, 8  ;  its  Eastern  origin,  18  ;  its 
orthodoxy,  33  ;  Pelagianism  in,  ib.  ; 
Gildas'  picture  of,  38 ;  in  Wales, 
43  ;  culminating  point  of,  50  ;  seven 
of  its  bishops  meet  St.  Augustine, 
69,  70;  fusion  of,  with  English 
Church,  93. 

British  and   Foreign  Bible  Society, 

'  533'  53S>  610. 

Broad  Church  Party,  599,  643. 

Brougham,  Lord,  580. 

Brovi,  Council  of,  54. 

Brownists,  359. 

Bull's  Defence  of  Nicene  Creed,  507. 
Bunyan,  352. 

Burial  Laws  Amendment  Act,  612. 


Burke,  510. 

Burnet,  Bishop,  426,  445,  447,  449, 

454,  460,  482,  486,  488. 
Butler,  Bishop,  455,  459. 

Cadok,  St.,  53,  56. 
Casdmon,  257. 

Caerleon-on-Usk,  30,  55,  70. 

Csesar,  Julius,  6. 

Calamy,  412,  418. 

Calcuith,  Synods  of,  412,  418,  604. 

Camden  Society,  558. 

Campeggio,  278. 

Campion,  357. 

Canons  of  1604,  374,  416. 

Canterbury,  church  built  at,   by  St. 

Augustine,  67. 

 St.  Martin's,  65,  67. 

 see  of,  declared  head  of  English 

Church  by  Synod  of  Cloveshoo,  107. 
 Cathedral   destroyed  by  Danes, 

124  ;  rebuilt  by  Lanfranc,  139. 
■  and  York,   contention  between 

the  sees  of,  142,  156,  178. 
Capetown  (Gray),  Bishop  of,  629. 
Caractacus,  6,  16. 
Carmelites,  243. 
Came,  Sir  Edward,  341. 
Cartwright,  361. 
Catholic  Association,  538. 
Caxton,  267. 
Cecil,  529. 

Cedd,  Bishop  of  Essex,  81,  86,  87. 

Celidonius,  Bishop  of  Vienne,  199. 

Cerularius,  Patriarch  of  Constanti- 
nople, 209. 

Chad,  Bishop,  83,  94,  95. 

Chaderton,  370,  374. 

Chalcedon,  Council  of,  197. 

Chancery  Court  of  York,  581,  582. 

Chantries,  destruction  ot,  294,  312, 
313- 

Charity-schools,  foundation  of,  481. 

Charlemagne,  102. 

Charles  I.,  King,  382 — 409. 

 -11.,  King,  410 — 426;  reign  of, 

the  golden  era  of  the  English  Church, 

425. 

Chester,  see  of,  544. 

Chicheley,  Archbishop,  289. 

Chichester,  see  of,  140. 

Chillingworth,  426,  476,  498. 

Christendom,  re-union  of,  658. 

"  Christian  Year,"  the,  553. 

Church,  coldness  of  its  services  in 
eighteenth  century,  474,  475 ;  con- 
dition of,  in  early  part  of  nine- 
teenth century,  546,  616  ;  not  created 
at  the  Reformation,  603  ;  older  than 
Parliament,  ib.  ;  its  property  the 
most  ancient  in. the  kingdom,  604; 


INDEX. 


671 


revival  of,  in  nineteenth  century, 
634-645. 

Church  Association,  582. 

 and  State,  539. 

 Building  Society,  553- 

 Discipline  Act,  590. 

 of  England  Working-men's  So- 
ciety, 582. 

 Missionary  Society  founded,  532. 

 rates,  abolition  of,  605,  608. 

 Enquiry  Commission,  635. 

Churches,  money  voted  for  building, 

473.  474- 
Chubb,  501,  504. 

Clarendon,   Lord,  421,  485;  Consti- 
tutions of,  168,  171,  172,  176,  578. 
Clarke,  492,  508,  509. 
Cleaver,  I5ishop,  597. 
Clement  V.,  Pope,  224,  231. 
Clergy,  submission  of  the,  281,  381. 

 Submission  Act  of,  284. 

 celibacy  of  the,  303,  321,  363. 

 Disabilities  Act,  614. 

Clericis  Laicos  Bull,  222. 
Clermont,  Council  of,  213. 
Clewer  case,  590. 

Clifton  V.  Ridsdale,  586—588,  599. 
Cloveshoo,  Councils  of,  106,  109. 
Cnut,  King,  124. 
Cobbett,  William,  645. 
Cobham,  Lord,  263,  264. 
Coiffi,  73. 

Colenso,  Dr.,  622,  629,  630. 
Colet,  Dean,  268. 

Colleges  at  the  Universities,  origin  of, 
24.5. 

Collier,  Jeremy,  442,  443. 
Collins,  501,  503,  504. 
Colman,  Bishop,  80,  81. 
Cologne,  meeting  of  Old  Catholics  at, 
625. 

Colonial  Bishoprics  Council,  621. 

 episcopate,  521,  534,  620,  621. 

Columba,  St.,  48. 
Columban,  48. 

Commission,  High  Court,  erected,  343; 
abolished,  399  ;  revived,  430. 

Committee  of  Religion,  397. 

Comprehension,  Bill  of,  445. 

Compton,  Bishop,  435,  449,  486  ;  sus- 
pended, 431. 

Conferences,  diocesan,  620. 

 Lambeth,  621,  622. 

Conge  d'elire,  285,  317,  342,  660. 

Congresses,  Church,  620. 

Constance,  Council  of,  225,  260. 

Constantine,  Emperor,  27  ;  donation 
of,  207. 

Constantinople,  First  Council  of,  196. 
Conventicle  Acts,  418,  419. 
Convocation,  rights  of,  invaded,  284  ; 


restored  by  Mary,  331  ;  repudiates 
the  reforms  of  Edward  VL,  332  ; 
sits  after  prorogation  of  Parliament, 
395  ;  under  William  TIL,  448,  449, 
451  ;  suppression  of,  462,  485 — 487  ; 
much  needed  in  eighteenth  century, 
463,  473  ;  revival  of,  619,  620  ;  re- 
form of,  necessary,  660. 

Conybeare's  "Defence  of  Revealed 
Religion,"  505- 

Coombe  v.  Edwards,  586. 

Copes,  376  n. 

Corboil,  William  of.  Archbishop,  157. 

Cornwall,  saints  of,  58. 

Cornwallis,  Bishop,  465. 

 Archlsishop,  474  n. 

Corporation  Act,  422. 

Cosin,  Bishop,  41 1,  414. 

Courts,  separation  of  the  civil  and  ec  - 
clesiastical,  136. 

Covenanters,  394. 

Coverdale,  Bishop,  335,  350. 

Cowper-Temple  clause,  610. 

Crediton,  see  of,  117. 

Crewe,  430,  431. 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  288,  408 — 410. 

Croyland,  monastery  of,  119. 

Crumwell,  289,  294,  297,  299,  303. 

Crusades,  the,  213 — 216. 

Cranmer,  consults  the  Universities  as 
to  Henry  the  Eighth's  divorce,  278  ; 
his  oath  to  the  King  and  to  the  Pope, 
279  ;  his  party  amongst  the  bishops, 
299  and  n.,  309;  his  Erastianism, 
313;  his  change  of  opinions,  328; 
Cardinal  Pole  intercedes  for,  335  ; 
his  recantation,  336  ;  his  repentance 
and  execution,  339. 

Cudworth,  426. 

Curates'  Augmentation  Fund,  639. 
Cuthbert,  Archbishop,  79,  106. 
 Bishop  of  Lindisfarne,  96. 

Dagan,  72. 

Danes,  invasions  of  the,  uo,  130. 
David,  St.,  55. 
Davids,  St.,  see  of,  55. 
Declaration  of  Lidulgence,  432  ;  or- 
dered to  be  read  in  the  churches, 

435.  436. 
Decretals,  Pseudo-Isidore,  206. 
Decretum  of  Gratian,  207,  237. 
Defender  of  the  Faith,  title  of,  275. 
De  Haeretico  Comburendo,  statute  of, 

262. 

Deism,  499,  503,  504. 
Delegates,  Court  of,  578. 
Denison,  Archdeacon,  561,  590- 
Denmark,  conversion  of,  125. 
Deusdedit,  Archbishop,  91. 
Dinooth,  69. 


672 


INDEX. 


Diocletian  persecution,  24. 
Directory  for  Public  Worship,  402. 
Disendowment,  653. 
Disestablishment,  647,  654 ;  of  Irish 

Church,  648. 
Dissent,  growth  of,  596,  597. 
Dissenting  Ministers'  Act,  536. 
Divorce  Act,  606  ;  increase  of  divorces 

since,  607. 
Doctrine,  how  affected  by  the  law 

courts  in  nineteenth  century,  584 

—586. 

DoUinger,  Dr.,  625,    627,    647;  on 

English  Orders,  627. 
Dominic  Guzman,  St.,  243,  247. 
Dominicans,  243,  246. 
Dorchester,  see  of,  85. 
Dort,  Synod  of,  378,  385. 
"Drink  bill,"  652. 

Dubricius,  St. ,  metropolitan  of  Caer- 

leon,  40 ;  school  of,  53. 
Dulia,  246. 

Duns  Scotus,  239,  245. 

Dunstan,  St.,  Archbishop,  119 — 122. 

Dunwich,  see  of,  84. 

Duppa,  Bryan,  Bishop,  400,  411. 

Durham,  University  of,  632. 

Eadbald,  King,  73. 

East  and  West,  division  of,  between, 

209,  215. 
Eastenfeld,  Sraod  of,  icxd. 
Easter,  disputes  about,  69 ;  settled, 

81. 

Eborius,  Bishop  of  York,  30. 
Ecclesiastical  Commission,  the,  616, 
636. 

 Courts  Commission,  596,  641. 

 Titles  Bill,  565. 

Ecclesiological  Society,  558. 
Edmondsbury,  St.,  monastery  of,  125, 
187. 

Edward  the  Confessor,  125. 
Edward  I.,  King,  222. 
Edwin,  King  of  Northumbria,  74 — 76. 
Egbert,  first  Archbishop  of  York,  105. 
  King,  1 10. 

Eighteenth  century,  review  of,  452 — 
479- 

Eldest  son  of  the  Church,  title  of,  201. 
Eleutherius,  Pope,  22. 
Elfric,  Archbishop,  123,  259. 
Elphege,  Archbishop,  murdered  by  the 

Danes,  124. 
Elphinstone  v.  Purchas,  568. 
Ehvan,  Bishop,  22. 
Emancipation  Act,  551. 
Encyclical,  the  Lambeth,  622. 
Endowments  promoted  by  Archbishop 

Theodore,  94. 
English  Church  Union,  582. 


Episcopal  Act,  617. 
Erasmus,  267. 

Erigena,  John  Scotus,  115  and  n.,  I17. 
"  Essays  and  Reviews,"  628. 
Essendon,  monaster)-  of,  124. 
Essex,  conversion  of,  85. 
"  Et  Castera  "  Oath,  395. 
Ethelbert,  King,  64 ;   conversion  of, 
84. 

Ethelred,  King,  53,  70. 

Ethelwulf,  King,  112,  113. 

Eugenius  IV.,  Pope,  225. 

Evangelicals,  the,  their  teaching,  529  ; 
doctrine,  ib.  ;  great  good  done  by, 
531  ;  preference  of,  for  sermons,  ib.  ; 
faults  of  their  teaching,  532 ;  dis- 
regard of  rubrics,  533 ;  increase  of 
dissent  under,  598. 

Ewald,  Black  and  White,  50. 

Exclusion  Bill,  the,  424. 

Exeter,  late  Bishop  of,  563,  584  and  n. 

Faber,  556,  561,  562. 
Farmer,  Romanist  Bishop  of  Oxford, 
434- 

Feathers'  Tavern  Petition,  510. 
Filioque  clause,  210,  626. 
Fire  of  London,  420,  473. 
Firmin,  Thomas,  407. 
Fisher,  Bishop,  276,  287 ;  execution 
of,  288. 

Fitz-Ralph,  Archbishop,  253. 
Five  Mile  Act,  419. 
Fleet  clergy,  471. 
Fletcher  of  Madeley,  524. 
Fleury,  monastei-y  of,  119. 
Florence,  Council  of,  225. 
Formosus,  Pope,  117,  118. 
Frampton,  Bishop,  441,  442. 
Francis  of  Assisi,  St.,  243. 
Franciscans,  243,  246. 
Frederick  II.,  Emperor,  219,  221. 
Froude,  Hurrell,  555 ;  his  Remains, 
556. 

Gall,  St.,  49. 
Gambold,  515. 

Gardiner,  Bishop,  advocates  Henry 
the  Eighth's  cause  against  Katha- 
rine, 277  ;  becomes  Bishop  of  Win- 
chester, 278  ;  committed  to  the 
Tower,  316;  made  Lord  Chancel- 
lor, 329  ;  character  of,  330. 

Gaunt,  John  of,  254. 

George  I.,  King,  491. 

George's-in-the-East,  St.,  parish  of, 
569. 

Georgia,  Colony  of,  founded,  514. 
German,  St.,  34,  35;  see  of,  117. 
Gibbon,  505. 

Gibraltar,  see  of,  621,  623,  624. 


INDEX. 


Gibson,  Bishop,  455,  459. 
Gildas,  I,  15,  57,  58. 
Gladstone,  561,  608,  609,  61 2,  615. 
Gladys,  17. 

Glastonbury  Abbey,  said  to  be  founded 
by  Joseph  of  Arimathsea,  9  ;  restored 
by  Dunstan,  121;  a  church  at,  built 
by  St. David,  55  ;  riot  in  the  Abbey, 
141. 

Gloucester,  see  of,  295. 

Godfrey,  423. 

Godfrey  de  Bouillon,  214. 

Gorham  case,  the,  563. 

Grant,  Richard,  Archbishop,  229. 

Greek  Church,  connexion  of  the  Eng- 
lish Church  with,  624. 

Gregorian  Chants,  62. 

Gregory  the  Great,  St. ,  Pope,  60 — 68  ; 
denounces  the  title  of  Universal 
Bishop,  199. 

 II.,  Tope,  51. 

 III.,  Pope,  202. 

 VII.  (Hildebrand),  Pope,  William 

I.  refuses  fealty  to,  135;  Lanfranc 
disregards  the  order  of,  139;  holds 
two  .Synods  at  Rome  on  the  doctrine 
of  Transubstantiation,  140  ;  advance 
of  the  papacy  under,  211  ;  excom- 
municates Henry  IV.  (afterwards 
Emperor),  211  ;  dies  in  exile  at  Sa- 
lerno, 212. 

 IX.,  Pope,  his  extortions  from 

England,  232. 

Grindall,  Archbishop,  his  Puritanism, 
363 ;  his  cruel  treatment  by  Queen 
Elizabeth,  364. 

Grostete,  Bishop,  251. 

Guest,  345. 

Guiscard,  Robert,  212. 
Guthrum,  1 14. 

Hadrian  IV.,  Pope,  217. 
Hales,  426  ;  Alexander  of,  155,  239  n., 
245. 

Hall,  Bishop,  398,  399,  406. 
Hammond,  402,  406,  411. 
Hampden,  Bishop,  556,  562. 
Hampton  Court  Conference,  370 — 375. 
Hanover-square   Rooms,  meeting  in, 

576,  643. 
Harold  Browne,  Bishop,  625. 
Harris,  Bishop,  624. 
Hatfield,  Synod  of,  99. 
Heath,  Archbishop,  344,  399. 
Heavenfield,  battle  of,  77. 
Hebbert  v.  Purchas,  574,  586 — 588. 
Henry  I.,  King,  148,  153,  187. 

 II.,  King,  162—178. 

 IV.,  Emperor,  211. 

 VII.,  King,  266. 

 VIII.,   King,    the  Reformation 


under,  270 — 307  ;  Defender  of  the 
Faith,  275  ;  his  character  does  not 
affect  the  Reformation,  273 ;  marries 
Ann  Boleyn,  279  ;  his  marriage  con- 
firmed by  Cranmer,  280;  cleigy  re- 
fuse to  acknowledge  his  supremacy 
except  with  a  limitation,  281  ;  Re- 
formation in  his  reign  chiefly  politi- 
cal, 306. 

Herbert,  George,  406  ;  Lord,  of  Cher- 
bury,  499. 

Herluin,  Abbot  of  Bee,  137,  144. 

Hertford,  .Synod  of,  95. 

Hervey,  518,  528. 

Hexham,  see  of,  96,  102. 

Hickes,  442,  443,  492. 

Highbert,  Archbishop  of  Lichfield,  107. 

High  Church  and  Low  Church,  titles 
of,  444;  in  eighteenth  century,  458, 
460,  461  ;  comparative  strength  ol, 
642. 

- —   of  the  nineteenth  cen- 

tury, 458. 

Hilary,  Metropolitan  of  Aries,  denies 
the  Pope's  right  to  receive  appeals, 
199. 

Hilda,  Abbess,  75,  80. 

Hildesley,  Bishop,  459. 

Hill,  Rowland,  598. 

Hinckman,  Archbishop  of  Rlieims,  ex- 
poses the  spuriousness  of  the  Decre- 
tals, 207. 

Histriomastix,  the,  390. 

Hoadley,  Bishop,  486,  487,  492,  497. 

Hoare,  Henry,  619. 

Hobbes,  425. 

Homilies,  First  Book  of,  314  and  n.  ; 

Second  Book  of,  352  ;  of  Archbishop 

Elfric,  123. 
Honorius,  Archbishop,  91  ;  Pope,  232. 
Hook,  Dean,  561,  562,  608. 
Hooker,  366  ;  Ecclesiastical  Polity  of, 

367- 

Hooper,  Bishop,  310,  322  ;  execution 
of,  334- 

Home  Tooke  Act,  534  and  n. 
Horsley,  Bishop,  509,  511,  512. 
Hosius,  Bishop  of  Corduba,  29,  31. 
Hough,  434. 

Howard,  philanthropist,  517. 
Howley,  Archbishop,  580. 
Hubert,  Archbishop,  180. 
Humbert,  Cardinal,  210. 
Hume,  505. 
Humplirey,  355. 

Huntingdon,  Connexion  of  the  Countess 

of,  524,  597- 
Huss,  260. 
Hyperdulia,  246. 

Iconoclastic  controversy,  202. 


X  X 


6/4 


INDEX. 


Ideal  of  a  Christian  Church,  Ward's, 
561. 

Iltutus,  school  of,  53. 

Immaculate  Conception,  Doctrine  of, 
239,  246. 

Ina,  King,  109  ;  laws  of,  104. 

Independents,  359,  408,  507. 

India,  early  connexion  of  English 
Church  with,  1 16. 

Injunctions  of  Edward  VI. ,  314  ;  Eliza- 
beth, 348. 

Innocent  III.,  Pope,  219 — 221  ;  and 
King  John,  180 — 190. 

 IV.,  Pope,  232,  252. 

Investiture,  149. 

lona,  monastery  of,  48,  77,  80,  81. 
Ireland,  early  Church  of,  43,  45  ;  dis- 
establishment of  Church  of,  605,  612. 

James,  St.,  9. 

 the  deacon,  76. 

 I.,  King,  369—381. 

 II.,  King,  427—440. 

  Hall,  meeting  in,  643. 

Jane,  Regius  Professor  of  Divinity, 
440,  447. 

Jarrow,  monastery  of,  founded  104 ; 

destroyed  by  Danes,  118. 
Jefferies,  Lord  Chancellor,  429,  431, 

436. 

Jenkins  v.  Cook,  586,  588. 

Jenkinson,  Bishop,  545. 

Jerusalem,  Church  of,  mother  of  all 
Churches,  192;  early  intercourse  of 
England  with,  116;  condition  of, 
under  the  Turks,  213  ;  Latin  king- 
dom set  up  at,  215  ;  extinguished  by 
the  Saracens,  ib.  ;  bishopric  of,  560, 
and  App.  B. 

Jesuits,  foreign  seminaries  founded  by, 
356. 

Jewel,  Bishop,  350,  352,  365;  Apo- 
logy of,  366. 

John,  the  Precentor,  98,  104. 

 the  Faster,  200. 

 King,  179 — 190. 

 XI.,  Pope,  208. 

.  XII.,  Pope,  ib. 

■  XXII.,  Pope,  224. 

Jubilee,  the,  223  and  224  n. 

Julius  I.,  Pope,  right  of  hearing  ap- 
peals granted  to,  by  Council  of  Sar- 
dica,  196. 

 II.,  Pope,  275,  276. 

Justus,  Archbishop,  76,  86,  91. 

Juxon,  Archbishop,  393. 

Katharine,  Queen,  275,  280,  331. 
Kaye,  Bishop,  580. 
Keble,  John,  553,  555. 
 College,  633. 


Kelly,  Sir  FitzRoy,  on  the  Ridsdale 

Judgment,  594. 
Ken,  Bp.,  424,  436,  441,  443. 
Kent,  conversion  of,  65  ;  relapse  of, 

73  ;  re-conversion  of,  74. 
Kentigern  (St  Mungo),  57. 
Kettlewell,  442. 
Kilian,  St.,  49. 
Kilwardby,  Archbishop,  230. 
King,  Rev.  Bryan,  569. 
King's  Book,  303. 

 College,  London,  633. 

Kirkman,  515. 

Kirk-Shot,  104. 

Kitchen,  Bishop,  342,  349  n. 

Knewstubbs,  37c. 

Knox,  John,  392. 

Lake,  Bishop,  436,  441. 
Lambert,  Archbishop,  107. 
Lambeth  Articles,  365,  372  ;  synods  of, 
158. 

Lanfranc,  Archbishop,  136 — 142,  144. 
Langton,  Stephen,  181 — 190;  author 

of  Magna  Charta,  188. 
Lastingham,  monastery  of,  95. 
Lateran  IV  ,  Council  of,  220. 
Latimer,  Bishop,  309 ;  execution  of, 

335- 

Latitudinarian  Bishops,  449,  451,  457, 
479.  482. 

Latitudinarianism,  rise  of,  426  ;  growth 
of,  445,  498;  in  nineteenth  century, 

55.2- 
Latria,  246. 

Laud,  opposed  by  Abbot  at  Oxford, 
380 ;  refuses  to  be  consecrated  by 
him,  387  ;  appointed  Bishop  of  Lon- 
don, ib.  ;  prefixes  Declaration  to 
Thirty-nine  Articles,  388  ;  appointed 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  389 ;  in- 
troduces a  decent  ritual  into  churches, 
hostility  of  the  House  of  Commons 
to,  394 ;  committed  to  the  Tower, 
397 ;  execution  of,  403  ;  character 
of,  405 ;  his  plan  for  a  Colonial 
Episcopate,  426. 

Lavington,  Bishop,  514. 

Law,  Bishop,  508. 

Law's  "  Serious  Call,"  515  and  n. 

Lawrence,  Archbishop,  72,  73,  91. 

Lawson,  Sir  Wilfrid,  614. 

Lay  impropriators,  296. 

Lectionary,  New,  620,  641. 

Legates,  108,  157,  15S,  171. 

Legnano,  battle  of,  218. 

Le  Maistre  on  the  English  Church,  658. 

Leo  the  Great,  Pope,  199. 

 IX. ,  Pope,  excommunicates  Ce- 

rularius,  210. 

 X.,  Pope,  226,  267. 


INDEX. 


6-5 


Leo  the  Isaurian,  202. 
Leslie,  442. 

Letter  to  a  Convocation-man,  451. 

Liberation  Society,  the,  646,  653. 

Lichfield,  diocese  of,  87,  95  ;  arch- 
bishop of,  107 — 109. 

Liddell  v.  Westerton,  567,  573. 

Lincoln,  diocese  of,  141  ;  at  commence- 
ment of  nineteenth  century,  544. 

 Bishop  (Wordsworth)  of,  17  n., 

625,  657. 

Lindisfarne,  see  of,  78  ;  monastery  of, 
82  ;  destroyed  by  Danes,  118. 

Lindsay,  Theophilus,  510;  established 
the  first  Unitarian  Chapel,  511. 

Linus,  Bishop  of  Rome,  16. 

Litanies,  61  and  n. 

Litany,  305. 

Liturgies,  primitive,  18. 

Liverpool,  see  of,  630. 

Llanbadarn  Vaur,  54,  56. 

Lloyd,  Bishop  (Non-juror),  435,  441, 
443  ;  of  Oxford,  553. 

Locke,  499. 

London,  see  of,  intended  by  St.  Gre- 
gory to  be  a  metropolitan  see,  105  ; 
foreign  jurisdiction  of,  623 ;  synod 
of,  140,  142. 

Longley,  Archbishop,  622, 

Louis  the  Pious,  206. 

Lowder,  Rev.  C.  F.,  569. 

Lucius,  King,  21. 

Lupus,  36. 

Luther,  306. 

Lycurgos,  Archbishop,  626. 

Macaulay,  Lord,  650. 

Macrorie,  Bishop,  630. 

Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  expulsion 

of  the  President  and  Fellows  of,  435  ; 

they  are  restored,  439. 
Magna  Charta,  188 — 190,  592. 
Mainwaring,  iJishop,  386,  387. 
Manchester,  see  of,  617. 
Mandates,  224. 
Marozia,  208. 

Marriage  with  a  Deceased  Wife's  Sister, 
607  ;  Bill,  Lord  Hardwicke's,  472  ; 
(1836),  606. 

Martel,  Charles,  203. 

Martin  Marprelate  Tracts,  the,  368. 

Martin  v.  Mackonochie,  573,  586,  587, 
589. 

Martin's,  St.,  Canterbury,  64,  65. 
Martyrs'  Memorial  at  Oxford,  559. 
Mary,  Queen,  329 — 338. 
Massey,  Roman  Catholic,  appointed 

Dean  of  Christ  Church,  433. 
Matthew's  Bible,  301. 
Maynooth,  College  of,  537  ;  grant  to, 

561. 


Medwin,  22. 

Melanchthon,  306. 

Mellitus,  Archbishop,  77,  86,  91. 

Mendicants,  241,  248,  255,  290. 

Mercia,  Conversion  of,  86. 

Methodists,  the,  514 — 527. 

Metropolitans,  192. 

Miall,  647,  653. 

Millenary  Petition,  the,  370. 

Milton,  Poet,  398,  507. 

Missions,  British,  45. 

Monachism,  118,  241. 

Monasteries  destroyed  by  the  Danes, 
III;  revival  of,  119,  120;  dissolu- 
tion of,  under  Henry  VIIL,  288, 
290 — 292  ;  crime  consequent  on,  295  ; 
other  evils  consequent  on,  296,  297. 

Monothelite  heresy,  92,  99. 

Montagu,  Bishop,  385 — 387. 

Moravians,  influence  of,  on  John  Wes- 
ley, 517. 

More,  Sir  Thomas,  287  ;  execution  of, 

288  ;  (  Latitudinarian),  426. 
 Hannah,  525. 

Morgan,  Pelagius,  34 ;  (Deist),  501, 
503  ;  one  of  the  early  Methodists, 

515- 
Morosini,  215. 
Mortmain,  statute  of,  244. 
Motett  Society,  558. 

Nag's  Head  Fable,  351. 

National  Society,  the,  535,  610,  631. 

Nelson,  Robert,  442,  476. 

Neot,  St.,  115  n. 

Newman,  Cardinal,  555,  556,  559—  562. 

Newton,  529,  598. 

Nice,  Council  of,  31. 

Nicholas  L,  Pope,  208. 

Ninian,  St.,  46. 

Nix,  Bishop,  266. 

Nonconformists,  numerous  sects  of, 
600  ;  objection  of,  to  a  census,  ib.  ; 
their  numbers  individually  insignifi- 
cant, ib.  ;  and  collectively  either 
small,  601  ;  or  their  conscientious 
grievances  must  be  infinitesimal,  602  ; 
encroachments  of,  605,  608,609,  612, 
614;  opposition  of,  to  the  Church, 
649  ;  duty  of  the  Church  to,  655, 
657- 

Non-juring  schism,  441—443. 

"No  Popery"  Riots,  536. 

Northumberland,  Protector,  309,  323. 

Northumbria,  conversion  of,  74 — 83. 

Nothelm,  Archbishop,  collects  mate- 
rials at  Rome  for  Bede's  History, 
ICS. 

Oakley,  553,  561,  562. 

Occasional  Conformity  Act,  489,  494. 


6/6 


INDEX. 


Odo,  Archbishop,  119. 

Offa,  King  of  Meicia,  founds  arch- 
bishopric of  Lichfield,  107  ;  imposes 
Peter-pence,  109 ;  legalises  pre-ex- 
isting payment  of  tithes,  604. 

Oglethorpe,  Bishop,  crowns  Queen 
Elizabeth,  339. 

  General,  517. 

Ordinal  added  to  the  Prayer-Book,  321. 

Ordination,  examination  for,  in  early 
part  of  nineteenth  century,  545. 

Ornaments  Rubric,  the,  415,  567,  569. 

Osmund,  Bishop,  J41,  319. 

Osney,  Synod  of,  190 ;  Abbey  of,  its 
property  diverted  to  the  see  of  Ox- 
ford, 295. 

Oswald,  St.,  77 — 79. 

Oswy,  79. 

Otho  the  Great,  208. 
Overall,  Bishop,  370,  414. 
Oxford,  see  of,  295  ;  in  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, 470. 
 Bishop  (Mackarness)  of,  590. 

Paine's  "  Age  of  Reason,"  505. 
Pall,  Appendix  A. 
Palladius,  47. 
Pandulph,  184. 

Papal  Hierarchy  re-established  in  Eng- 
land, 563. 

Parishes  formed  by  Archbishop  Theo- 
dore, 93. 

Parker,  Archbishop,  345,  350,  362. 

 Samuel,  Bishop  of  Oxford,  434. 

Parliament,  the  Short,  394  ;  the  Long, 

396,  411  ;  and  the  Church,  550,  593, 

599- 

Parties  in  the  English  Church,  642. 
Paschall  IL,  Pope,  148,  150 — 153. 
Patern,  St.,  56. 
Patrick,  St.,  ih. 

Patteson,  Bishop  (martyr),  621. 

Paul,  St.,  authorities  for  his  preaching 
in  Britain,  12,  17. 

Paulinus,  Bishop  of  York,  76  ;  after- 
wards Bishop  of  Rochester,  ib. 

Peacock,  Bishop,  264. 

Peada,  87. 

Peckham,  Archbishop,  230. 

Peel  Districts,  the,  618. 

Pelagianism  in  British  Church,  35,  36. 

Penzance,  Lord,  correspondence  be- 
tween, and  the  late  Lord  Chief  Jus- 
tice, 584  n.  ;  court  of,  595. 

Pepin,  203. 

Persons,  357. 

Peter,  St.,  Founder  of  the  Church,  191. 

 the  Hermit,  213. 

 pence,  109,  135,  233. 

■         Martyr,  310. 

Peterborough,  see  of,  295. 


Petition  of  Right,  387. 
Pews,  477. 

Philip  Augustus,  184. 

 the  Fair,  221,  222. 

Phinan,  Bishop,  80,  86,  87. 

Phlegmund,  Archbishop,  115. 

Phocas,  200,  273. 

Piers  Ploughman's  Vision,  253. 

Pilgrimage  of  Grace,  the,  291. 

Pisa,  Council  of,  225. 

Pius  v..  Pope,  excommunicates  Queen 
Elizabeth,  357. 

Pluralities,  prevalence  of,  in  eighteenth 
century,  469  ;  act,  616. 

Pole,  Cardinal,  289,  333,  334,  337. 

Pomponia  Griecina,  16. 

Poor  Law,  origin  of  the,  296. 

Pope,  title  of,  applied  to  Bishops  of 
Rome,  210. 

Porteus,  Bishop,  474,  529,  541. 

Potter,  Archbishop,  454,  495. 

Prremunientes  Clause,  451,  483  n. 

Prremunire,  Statute  of,  236. 

Prague,  Jerome  of,  260. 

Prayer-Book,  First,  of  King  Edward 
VL,  319,  520,  567. 

 ^  Second,  of  King  Edward  VL, 

324 ;  publication  of,  stopped,  325. 

 of  Queen  Elizabeth,  345  ;  the  Se- 
cond Book  of  King  Edward  taken 
as  its  model,  346  ;  with  a  few  altera- 
tions, ib.  ;  and  a  return  to  the  Orna- 
ments of  the  First  Prayer-Book,  347  ; 
the  Pope  offers  to  accept  it,  342. 

 of  1662,  414;  adopts  Ornaments 

of  First  Prayer-Book  of  King  Ed- 
ward VI. ,  416. 

 revision  of,  under  William  III. 

comes  to  nothing,  447,  449. 

Presbyterians,  408,  409;  ejected,  417  ; 
adopt  Unitarian  views,  507  ;  their 
chapels  and  endowments  given  to 
the  Unitarians,  508. 

Prideaux,  Bishop,  400,  402. 

Priestley,  509,  511,  512. 

Primer,  298. 

Privy  Council,  Judicial  Committee  of, 
568,  579,  593- 

Promoting  Christian  Knowledge,  So- 
ciety for,  480. 

Propagation  of  the  Gospel,  Society  for, 
481. 

Prophesyings  of  the  clergy,  363. 

Protestant,  Associations,  536  ;  era  of 
the  English  Church,  458,  460  ;  ob- 
jection of  the  Lower  House  of  Con- 
vocation to  be  called  by  the  name, 
448. 

Provisions,  224. 

Provisors,  Statute  of,  236. 

Prynne,  390,  396. 


INDEX. 


677 


Public  Worship  Regulation  Act,  581  ; 
its  motive  not  clear,  583 ;  objection 
of  Lord  Shaftesbury  to,  ib. ;  disas- 
trous fate  of,  584,  595,  596. 

Purchas  Judgment,  Remonstrance 
against,  of  nearly  5,000  clergymen, 
576,  587- 

Puritans,  297,  358,  360,  369,  380,  416. 
Purvey,  258  and  n. 

Pusey,  Dr.,  555,  556;  suspension  of, 
560. 

Quignon,  Cardinal,  Breviary  of,  321. 
Quinquarticular  Confession,  378. 
Quinsextian  Council,  201. 

Raikes,  promoter  of  Sunday-schools, 
532. 

Ranulph  (Flambard),  143,  145,  149. 

Reading,  Monastery  of,  293. 

Reform  Bill,  a  new  era  in  English 

Church  inaugurated  by,  539,  551. 
Reformatio  Legum  Ecclesiasticarum, 

327- 

Reformation,  causes  that  led  to,  267, 
269 ;  Catholic  character  of,  270,  274; 
mistake  regarding,  603. 

Regium  Donum,  the,  457,  458  n. 

Regnans  in  Excelsis,  Bull,  57. 

Reinkens,  Bishop,  627. 

Religious  Tract  Society,  452. 

Restitutus,  Metropolitan  of  London, 
30- 

Restoration,  the,  411. 
Revision  of  the  Authorized  Version, 
641. 

Reynolds,  Archbishop,  230;  (Puritan), 
370,  412;  accepts  see  of  Norwich, 
418. 

Richard,  St.  Edmund  of  Pontigny, 
Archbishop,  250. 

Ridley,  Bishop,  309,  313,  316;  execu- 
tion of,  335. 

Rimini,  Council  of,  32. 

Ripon,  monastery  of,  97  ;  see  of,  ib. ; 
nevjr  see  of,  in  nineteenth  century, 
617. 

Ritual  Commission,  575,  640. 

Ritualism,  an  inexact  term,  565 ;  rise 
of,  568 ;  object  of,  566 ;  six  points 
of,  571  ;  common  in  foreign  Protes- 
tant countries,  571  ;  memorials 
against,  576 ;  how  affected  by  re- 
cent legislation,  586,  587  ;  increase 
of,  since  P.W.R.A.,  588,  589. 

Ritualists,  accused  of  disobedience  to 
bishops,  572  ;  answer  as  to  the 
charge,  573,  574  ;  objections  of,  to 
P.  W.  R.  A.,  583  ;  deny  that  they 
are  Law-breakers,  592 — -594. 

Robert  of  Jumi^ges,  Archbishop,  126. 


Rochester,  Earl  of,  430,  431  ;  see  of, 

Rockingham,  Council  of,  146. 

Rodgers,  martyr,  301,  334. 

Romaine,  528,  570. 

Roman  Catholic  Emancipation  Act, 
535.  537.  538;  Relief  Bill,  535. 

Romanists,  influence  of,  in  England 
under  James  IL ,  429. 

Rome,  Church  of,  191 — 226  ;  Patri- 
archate of,  at  first  confined  to  the 
Suburbicarian  provinces,  193;  gra- 
dual advance  of,  193 — 195,  197  — 
199,  205,  206,  209,  211,  216,  218 
— 220  ;  height  of  power  of,  221  ;  de- 
cline of,  223  ;  Curia  of,  234 ;  gradual 
influence  of,  in  England,  108,  1 16, 
127,  129,  139,  154,  157,  160,  179, 
183,  185,  227,  231  ;  opposition  to, 
in  England,  122,  135,  136,  139,  157, 
189,  236  ;  jurisdiction  of  in  England 
abolished,  286. 

 large  portion  of,  burnt,  212. 

Root  and  Branch  Bill,  the,  398,  401. 

Rose,  Rev.  H.  J.,  454. 

Roses,  Wars  of  the,  265,  270. 

Rundle,  508. 

Russell,  Lord  J.,  letter  of,  to  the  Bi- 
shop of  Durham,  454. 

Sacheverell,  473,  487,  489. 
Saladin,  214. 

Salisbury,  diocese  of,  140. 
Sampson,  St.,  40,  53,  56. 

 Dean  of  Christ  Church,  355. 

Bancroft,  Archbishop,  423,  430,  435, 
441,  443- 

Sanderson,  Bishop,  402,  406,  411,  414. 

Sardica,  Council  of,  32,  195. 

Sarum  Use,  141,  305,  319. 

Sautre,  262. 

Savoy  Conference,  412. 

Saxons,  invasions  of  the,  41,  42. 

Schism,  Act,  490,  494  ;  the  Roman,  in 

England,  357,  563. 
Schoolmen,  the,  237 — 239  and  n. 
Scory,  Bishop,  350. 
Scotland,  early  Church  of,  43. 
  episcopacy    abolished    in,  by 

Charles  L,  399  ;  under  William  III., 

457- 

Scots,  originally  inhabitants  of  Ireland, 
45 ;  conquer  and  expel  the  Picts, 
46. 

Seabury,  first  bishop  of  North  America, 

521. 

Sebert,  King,  71. 

Seeker,  Archbishop,  455,  476. 

Selsey,  see  of,  89. 

Selwyn  College,  633. 

Seminaries,  foreign,  256. 


678 


INDEX. 


Senlac,  battle  of,  128. 
Sentences,  book  of,  237. 
Sergius,  Pope,  208. 
Severus,  Bishop,  35. 
Sevvell,  Archbishop,  252. 
Shaftesbury  (Deist),  500. 

 •  Lord,  574,  583. 

Sharp,  incurs  the  wrath  of  James  II., 

431  ;  afterwards  made  Archbishop  of 

York,  447. 
Sheppard  v.  Bennett,  585,  588. 
Sheldon,  Archbishop,  411,  421,  485. 
Sherlock,  Dean,  436,  442. 
 Bishop,  trial  of  the  Witnesses  of, 

305- 

Shortened  service,  form  of,  620,  640. 

Sibthorpe,  386. 

Sigebert,  King,  84,  86,  89. 

Simeon,  529. 

Simeonites,  529. 

Siricius,  Pope,  197,  206. 

Smectymnuan  controversy,  398. 

Societies,  Religious,  480. 

Solemn  I^eague  and  Covenant,  the, 

393.  402,  417. 
Stafford,  Lord,  423,  424. 
Standard,  battle  of  the,  159. 
Stanhope,  Lord,  494. 
Stanley,  Bishop,  545. 
Star  Chamber,  391  ;  abolished,  399. 
Stephen,  King,  158,  161. 

 Bishop  of  Rome,  195. 

Sternhold  and  Hopkins,  old  version  of, 

548. 

Stigand,  Archbishop,  126 — 128,  133, 
134- 

Stillingfleet,  Bishop,  436,  447,  450. 
Stock,  532. 

Stokesley,  Bishop,  299. 
Stony  Sabbath,  393. 
Strafford,  Lord,  389,  396. 
Suburbicarian  Provinces,  193  n. 
Sudbury,  Archbishop,  255  ;  murdered, 
256. 

Sumner,  Archbishop,  619. 

Sunday,    observance    of,    475,    476  ; 

schools,  530. 
Supremacy,  Royal,  the,  281,  298,  329, 

333.  343.  592  ;  Act  of,  281,  286. 
S within,  St.,  112. 
Sylvester,  Pope,  30. 


Table  of  degrees  of  marriage,  353. 
Tables,  the,  393. 

Tate  and  Brady,  new  version  of,  548. 
Tatwine,  Archbishop,  104. 
Taylor,  Jeremy,  406. 
Telian,  St.,  53,  57. 

Temporal  power,  foundation  of  Rome's, 
204. 


Tenison,  Archbishop,  436,  450,  485, 

498  ;  bequeathed  ;^iooo  towards  a 

colonial  episcopate,  534. 
Test  Act,  422,  428,  461,  489,  494  ; 

University,  609  ;   and  Corporation 

Act,  repeal  of,  551. 
Tests,  abolition  of,  at  the  Universities, 

609,  610. 
Thadioc,  Bishop  of  York,  42. 
Theobald,  Archbishop,  158,  160. 
Theodora,  208. 

Theodore,  Archbishop,  92 — 100. 
Theological  Colleges,  632. 
Theon,  Bishop  of  London,  42. 
Thetford,  diocese  of,  141. 
Thomas,  Bishop,  441. 
Thurketal,  Chancellor,  120. 
Thursby,  Archbishop,  253. 
Thurstan,  Bishop,  156,  159;  abbot, 
141. 

Tillotson,  Archbishop,  426,  436,  447 — 

450,  498. 
Tindal,  501,  504. 

Tithe  Commutation  Act,  618  ;  Redemp- 
tion Trust,  637. 

Titus  Gates,  423. 

Toland,  486,  500,  503. 

Toleration,  Act  of,  446  ;  plan  of  Charles 
II.  for  .selling,  420. 

Tomlinson,  Bishop,  623. 

Toplady,  528. 

Towns,  growth  of  the  manufacturing, 
549- 

Tractarians,  555,  556. 

Tracts  for  the  Times,  554,  555,  558  ; 

discontinued,    557  ;    lines  on,  by 

Isaac  Williams,  555  n. 
Transubstantiation,  140,  221,  256,  303, 

304,  332,  423. 
Travers,  367. 
Treason  Act,  287. 
Treasury  of  Grace,  239,  245. 
Trelawney,  Bishop,  436. 
Trench,  Archbishop,  642. 
Trevecca,  College  of,  524. 
Triers,  410. 
Trower,  Bishop,  624. 
Truro,  Bishopric  of,  630. 
Tuda,  Bishop,  82. 

Tunstall,  Bishop,  268,  306,  308,  323, 
592. 

Turner,  Bishop,  435,  441. 
Tyndale,  268. 

Unam  Sanctam,  Bull,  222. 
Uniformity,  First  Act  of  Edward  VI., 
320. 

 Second  Act  of  Edward  VI.,  334, 

332- 

 Act  of  Elizabeth,  345,  357,  415. 

 Act  of  Charles  II.,  415 — 417. 


INDEX. 


679 


Union,  London,  the,  609. 
Urban  II.,  Pope,  145 — 148,  213. 
—  v..  Pope,  235,  254. 
Usher,  Archbishop,  400,  402. 

Van  Mildert,  Bishop,  633. 
Venn,  529. 

Vestments,  the,  pronounced  by  Judicial 
Committee  of  Privy  Council  to  be 
legal,  567,  568,  573  ;  to  be  illegal, 
574>  586. 

Vicarages,  origin  of,  297. 

Victor,  Bishop  of  Rome,  195. 

Vitalian,  Pope,  92. 

Vortigern,  38. 

Vow,  the,  388. 

Wagstafle,  442,  443. 

Wake,  Archbishop,  450,  451,  459,  491  ; 
correspondence  of,  with  Du  Pin,  493 ; 
with  Courayer,  494. 

Wales,  British  Church  in,  42,  43  ;  Dis- 
sent in,  in  nineteenth  century,  597, 
598- 

Walker,  Obadiah,  433. 

Walton,  Bryan,  Bishop,  411. 

Wandsworth,  orders  of,  361. 

Warburton,  Bishop,  463,  485,  514; 
Divine  legation  of,  505. 

Warelwast,  151,  153. 

Warham,  Archbishop,  268,  279. 

Warminster,  St.  Boniface,  632. 

Waterland,  Bishop,  459. 

Watson,  Bishop,  464,  543. 

Waynflete,  Bishop,  289. 

Wearmouth,  monastery  of,  103,  118. 

Wedmore,  peace  of,  114. 

Wells,  see  of,  117. 

Wesley,  Charles,  515. 

 John,  early  life  of,  515;  goes  to 

Georgia,  517  ;  his  account  of  his  con- 
version, 519;  visits  Hernhut,  t'i. ; 
separates  from  the  Moravians,  t//.  ; 
and  from  Whitfield,  523  ;  sanctions 
lay  preaching,  ;  usurps  episcopal 
functions,  id.  ;  his  marriage,  524 ; 
his  energetic  life,  li.  ;  his  great  in- 
fluence, 526  ;  his  inconsistency,  id.  ; 
accused  of  popery,  570. 

Wesleyan  Conference,  523. 

 Methodists,  schism  of,  527,  656, 

657- 

Wessex,  conversion  of,  85. 
West,  schism  of  the,  224. 
Westbury,  Lord,  595,  638. 
Western  empire,  revival  of,  205. 


Westminster  Abbey,  consecration  of, 
127. 

 Assembly  of  Divines,  401,  409. 

 Dean  (Stanley)  of,  625. 

 See  of,  295. 

■         Synod  of,  155. 

Whately,  Archbishop,  619. 
Whigs  and  Tories,  424,  454. 
Whip  wilh  six  cords,  the,  304,  316. 
Whiston,  508,  509. 

Whitby,  monastery  of,  80  ;  council  of, 
81. 

White,  Bishop,  436,  441. 

Whitfield,  515  ;  goes  to  Georgia,  518  ; 
early  life  of,  519;  first  sermon  of, 
520 ;  his  powerful  preaching,  ib.  ; 
returns  to  England  to  take  Priest's 
Orders,  521  ;  adopts  open-air  preach- 
ing, 522  ;  inhibited  by  the  Chan- 
cellor of  Bristol,  ib. 

Whitgift,  Archbishop,  361,  365,  370. 

Whiting,  Abbot,  execution  of,  292. 

Wicliffe,  253 — 260. 

Wigheard,  91. 

Wilberforce,  William,  529. 

 Bishop,  561,  619,  664. 

Wilfrid,  Bishop,  49,  81,  82,  88,  92, 
96—103. 

Wilkins,  426. 

William  I.,  King,  131,  132,  135. 

 II.,  King,  142,  148. 

 III.,  King,  440,  452. 

Williams,  Archbishop,  391,  396 — 399, 

402,  405. 

 Isaac,  555,  557. 

 V.  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  585. 

Willibrord,  49. 
Wilson  V.  Kendall,  585. 
Winchester,  see  of,  85,  142. 
Winfrid  (St.  Boniface),  51,  106,  204. 
Wini,  Bishop,  85,  96. 
Wiseman,  Cardinal,  565. 
Wolsey,  Cardinal,  276  —  278,  289. 
Woodard,  Canon,  Middle-Class  Schools 

of,  631. 

Wren,  Bishop,  393,  394,  397,  398. 
Wulfstan,  Bishop,  132,  134. 
Wurtemburg  Confession,  352. 
Wykeham,  William  of,  289. 

York,  see  of,  66,  76,  78,  83,  105,  142, 
156,  178. 

Zacharias,  Pope,  204. 
Zelotes,  St.  Simon,  9. 
Ziani,  Doge  of  Venice,  2l8. 
Zosimus,  Pope,  198. 


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R.  GODFEEY  FAUSSETT,  M.A. 

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11 


SIK  G.  G.  SCOTT,  F.S.A. 

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12 


JOHN  HENRY  PARKER,  C.B.,  F.S.A.,  HON.  M.A.  OXON. 

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13 


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A  SERIES  OF  GREEK  AND  LATIN  CLASSICS 

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Aristotelis  Ethica 
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jEschines  in  Ctesiiihontem 
Herodotus.    2  vols. 


PROSE  WRITERS. 


Thucydides.    2  vols. 
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Horatius 

Juvenalis  et  Persius 
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2  0 

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plementisAuliHirtii  et  aliorum  2 
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